This page provides information about how Dynatrace ingests and enriches OpenTelemetry metrics.
If you're still using the Dynatrace OpenTelemetry metrics exporter, we recommend that you migrate to the OTLP metrics exporter. For more information, see Migrating from the Dynatrace OTel metrics exporter to standard OTLP metrics exporter.
Dynatrace maps the individual OpenTelemetry instruments to the following Dynatrace metric types:
Explicit bucket histograms are supported with Dynatrace version 1.300+.
For exponential histograms, Dynatrace ingests the histogram's min|max|sum|count but doesn't ingest the buckets.
When ingesting OpenTelemetry metrics, limits and validations apply as described in the tables below.
When Metrics powered by Grail overview (DPS) is on your rate card:
When Custom Metrics Classic (DPS) is on your rate card, the limits in Default limits apply
For more information about advanced OTLP metric dimensions, see Important: OTLP Metric Dimensions Changes in the Dynatrace Community.
| Entity | Limit | Description |
|---|---|---|
Metric key length, characters | Min: 2, Max: 255 | The length of a metric key. |
Dimension key length, characters | Min: 1, Max: 100 | The length of a dimension key. If the maximum length is exceeded, the key is truncated at the upper limit. |
Dimension value length, characters | Min: 1, Max: 255 | The length of a dimension value. If the maximum length is exceeded, the dimension value is truncated at the upper limit. |
Number of dimensions per metric data point | 50 | The maximum total number of dimensions in a single metric data point. If the number of dimensions is exceeded, the whole data point is dropped. |
Total number of possible metric keys per environment | 100,000 | The maximum number of metric keys that can be active at the same time. |
Number of tuples per month per metric | 1,000,000 | The maximum number of tuples (unique metric-dimension key-value type combinations) for each metric key for the last 30 days. |
Number of tuples per month for all custom metrics | 50,000,000 | The maximum number of tuples (unique metric-dimension key-value type combinations) for all custom metrics for the last 30 days. |
Instrument unit, characters | 63 | The maximum total length of the instrument unit. If the maximum length is exceeded, the unit is dropped. |
Instrument description, characters | 1,023 | The maximum total length of the instrument description. If the maximum length is exceeded, the instrument description is truncated at the character limit. |
Request size | 4 MB | The maximum uncompressed size of an OTLP request with a metrics payload. If the limit is exceeded, the entire request is dropped. |
Metric data points | 15,000 | The maximum number of metric data points in an OTLP request with a metrics payload. If the limit is exceeded, the entire request is dropped. |
OpenTelemetry supports attributes on different levels in an OpenTelemetry metric request (that is, data points, scopes, and resources). Because attributes are saved in a flattened fashion on the Dynatrace side, there may be name collisions if attributes on different levels share the same name.
To handle such name conflicts, Dynatrace applies the following order of priority to choose which attribute will be ingested:
For example, if there is a data point and a scope attribute have the same name, the value of the data point will take precedence. Similarly, if a scope and resource attribute share the same name, Dynatrace will ingest the value of the scope attribute.
The Dynatrace backend exclusively works with delta values and requires the respective aggregation temporality.
Please ensure your metrics exporter is accordingly configured or set the OTEL_EXPORTER_OTLP_METRICS_TEMPORALITY_PREFERENCE environment variable to DELTA.
For examples on how to set the temporality under each individual language, see the integration walkthroughs.
dt.metrics).-), and underscores (_).ä, ö, and ü)..count for counters and .gauge for gauges).If you use characters that are invalid according to the rules above, they will be replaced with underscores. If your metric key does not have at least one valid character, the data point will be dropped.
-), periods (.), and underscores (_).ä, ö, and ü).key.key-section format.If you use characters that are invalid according to the rules above, they will be replaced with underscores. If your dimension key does not have at least one valid character, the key will be dropped.
Dimension values must be passed as a string, Boolean, or integer.
Dynatrace does not support non-string dimensions and will convert Booleans and integers to strings upon ingest.
If any other type is used, the entire dimension will be dropped.
For exponential histograms, Dynatrace ingests the histogram's min|max|sum|count but doesn't ingest the buckets.
If any of below happens, the OpenTelemetry ingest API returns the 400 or 200 with partial success responses.
NaN or Infinite are invalid.The Dynatrace OpenTelemetry ingest API only returns an HTTP 400 when all metrics in the OTLP request are invalid.
Dynatrace does not support summary metrics.
Summary metrics only exist in the OpenTelemetry protocol (OTLP) for compatibility with other formats. Applications using official OpenTelemetry SDKs cannot produce summary metrics.