Extending Dynatrace (Davis data units)

Davis data units (DDU) provide a simple means of licensing certain capabilities (custom metrics, log monitoring, and custom events) on the Dynatrace platform. Think of DDUs as a kind of Dynatrace currency. In the same way that license consumption for Dynatrace RUM and Synthetic Monitoring relies on Digital Experience Monitoring (DEM) units, DDUs provide a seamless, shared consumption model across custom metrics, Log Monitoring, and custom events.

Because DDUs are consumption-based, you buy a certain volume and your available quota is consumed over time based on the amount of monitoring your environment consumes. This licensing approach makes it much easier for you to control and monitor your metric consumption (for example, in the case of misconfigured metrics) and to identify top consumers in your environment. To learn more about how metrics are licensed with DDUs, see Metric cost calculation.

For complete details about how your Dynatrace monitoring consumption is calculated, see Calculate Dynatrace monitoring consumption.

Davis data unit volumes

DDUs are purchased in volumes of 1 million units based on 1-3 year contract terms, with the full amount of licensed units renewing at the beginning of each year. For example, if you buy 100 million DDUs for a 3-year term, you can consume 100 million DDUs annually for 3 years.

You can purchase additional DDUs at any time if you run low. Reach out to your Dynatrace sales representative for details. To assist you in adjusting your monitoring consumption and avoiding cost overages, in-product notifications are displayed to alert your Dynatrace environment users when 90% and 100% of your licensed DDUs have been consumed.

Davis data units - Free tier

Every new Dynatrace SaaS environment and each Dynatrace Managed license receives 200,000 DDUs free of charge. This translates into 381 metrics, captured at a 1-minute frequency. This free tier enables you to test out features and experience Dynatrace monitoring value before you pay. The free tier of 200,000 DDUs automatically renews annually at the beginning of each new license term for each account. This benefit is not available to Offline or consumption-based (pay-as-you-go) accounts.

View DDU consumption details per environment

To see how many DDUs your environment has consumed, go to Account Management > License / Subscription > Overview. There you can view your DDU consumption and identify the top contributors to DDU consumption.

This page offers an overview of DDU consumption per pool, as well as a detailed view per monitored entity (host, service, process group, application, or other). The second level navigation allows to further drill into detailed consumption per DDU pool (such as Metrics, Log Monitoring, Events).

Get DDU consumption details via API

You can also pull DDU consumption details via our API. The following metrics are available for retrieving DDU consumption details per pool via the API:

Get DDU consumption by management zone

The above mentioned metrics do not directly support filtering by management zone, however the API can be used to achieve this and thereby address cross-departmental charging requirements and create a consumption report of your monitored entities split by management zones.

See a sample management zone reporting script in the Dynatrace snippets repository on GitHub The script accesses the builtin:billing.ddu.metrics.byEntity metric and allows you to query consumption of the Metrics DDU pool for all or one specific management zone in a defined timeframe.

DDU pools

With DDU pools you can define monthly or yearly limits for DDU consumption on a per-environment basis. By default, pool limits are not enforced. To define limits for DDU consumption, go to Settings > Consumption > Davis data unit pools

The following pools are available for limiting DDU consumption:

Each pool can have a monthly or yearly defined limit for total DDU consumption. Similar to DDU volume notifications, all users of an environment will see banner notifications once 90% and 100% of the pool limit have been consumed.

Pool limits are evaluated per calendar month/year and are not associated with license renewal dates.

Frequently asked questions

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