Synthetic App

Latest Dynatrace

With the Synthetic Synthetic app you can create and manage synthetic monitors.

Permissions

The following table describes the required permissions.

Permission
Description
geolocation:locations:lookup
allows querying geographic location data for private locations
storage:buckets:read
allows querying data from Grail
storage:entities:read
allows querying monitored entities from Grail
storage:metrics:read
allows querying metrics from Grail
storage:events:read
allows querying events from Grail
document:documents:write
allows creating and updating filter sets
document:documents:read
allows querying stored filter sets
document:documents:delete
allows deleting filter sets
state:user-app-states:write
allows setting default filter set
state:user-app-states:read
allows querying default filter set

Installation

Make sure the app is installed in your environment.

This is a list of synthetic monitors with powerful filtering mechanisms that allow you to narrow down the content to needed tests. The list contains basic metrics and a 'preview' panel, which allows you to familiarize yourself with important information describing monitor configuration and the results of recent executions.Results of execution of a selected test, with a focus on reported availability and performance. Details are provided on both the monitor and the request level.Define the scope of this monitor and the test configuration details, including frequency, locations, conditions for considering test execution successful, rules for problem triggering, etc.Define the configuration details of this private synthetic location, including its geographical position, assigned ActiveGates, rules for generating problems, etc.
1 of 4This is a list of synthetic monitors with powerful filtering mechanisms that allow you to narrow down the content to needed tests. The list contains basic metrics and a 'preview' panel, which allows you to familiarize yourself with important information describing monitor configuration and the results of recent executions.

The synthetic monitors page is the landing page of the Synthetic Synthetic app and is the control center for your synthetic monitors. By default, the page displays all monitors in your environment, active or inactive, in a table with key availability and performance results, so you can check the health of your monitors at a glance. Powerful and flexible filters enable you to narrow your search for synthetic monitors.

To find out how to create a new monitor, see Create monitors.

Monitor table

By default, monitors with open problems (issues) are displayed alphabetically at the top of the table. Next, enabled monitors with no problems are displayed alphabetically, followed by disabled monitors displayed alphabetically.

You can hide and sort columns in ascending or descending order. Select Columns in the top-right corner of the table to select which columns to display or hide.

Pagination controls at the bottom of the monitor table allow you to specify the number of rows per page and to move through the monitor table from page to page.

The columns display the following information for each monitor.

  • Monitor name—Select to view a quick overview of the monitor to the right of the Synthetic monitors page
  • Created—monitor creation date and time
  • Last modified—ID of the user who last edited the monitor and the date and time of modification
  • ID - full monitor identifier
  • Last execution—date and time of the most recent execution from any location
  • Type—monitor type, for example, HTTP
  • Frequency—execution frequency or On demand, as specified in the monitor configuration
  • Availability—average availability during the selected timeframe
  • Duration—average performance during the selected timeframe in seconds

Filters

Filters allowing multiple selections help you find the monitors you're looking for. You can also save frequently used filters. Expand Open Dashboards panel or collapse Close Dashboards panel the filters to focus on search or results, as required. The filters are automatically collapsed when viewing the quick overview for a monitor.

The following filter categories (each with multiple options) allow you to search for monitors.

  • Type—monitor type
  • Ongoing issues—monitors with and without availability or performance problems
  • Frontend application—associated RUM application
  • Status–whether monitors are active or inactive (disabled)
  • Locations–public and private monitoring locations
  • Device profile—for example, desktop, Apple iPhone 8
  • Last editor–ID of the user who last edited a monitor
  • Tags—values or key-value pairs applied to monitors; you can choose tags to include or exclude from your search.
  • Edited during the timeframe—monitors that were or were not edited during the selected global timeframe
  • ISP / Cloud provider—of public Synthetic locations
  • Frequency—monitoring frequency

How filters work

Within each category, you can select multiple filters. For example, when selecting monitors by Type, you can opt to view HTTP as well as DNS monitors. Within a category, filters are applied using the OR logic—monitors matching any selection are displayed.

The filter options shown in most categories depend on your monitors; only those filters relevant to your monitors are available. For example, if you have no HTTP monitors, you won't see the HTTP option to filter by.

The number of monitors matching each filter is displayed. For example, the list of Locations shows the number of monitors per location. This number is dynamically adjusted based on your filter selections in other categories.

You can select filters in multiple categories. Filter categories are applied using the AND logic. For example, if you select all Network availability monitors (DNS, ICMP, and TCP) and two tags, IP, and host-group, the resulting list contains network availability monitors with either the IP or the host-group tags.

Filter sets

You can save combinations of filters as named filter sets for quick access to frequently used search criteria—select Save new filter and provide a filter name. You can set one filter set as default to be applied each time you go to the Synthetic Synthetic app.

Select More More actions next to a filter set for additional actions such as Set as default, Rename, Duplicate, or Delete.

Filter bar

The filter bar Variable at the top of the page displays a fixed filter for searching by monitor name: select Filter by name and enter your search string. Any additional filters or filter sets you apply are displayed in the filter bar, from which you can clear applied filters.

In the Create monitor section, you can choose the type of synthetic monitor that you want to create.

Create monitors

There are three types of monitors:

Monitor preview

In the Synthetic Classic Synthetic app, to display the preview panel for a monitor, select the monitor's name in the Monitor name column of the Synthetic monitors page.

To browse between your monitors, open the preview panel for any monitor and then select another monitor name to switch the preview to the newly selected monitor. Filters are persistent.

The preview panel shows:

  • Tiles for important information at a glance:
    • Outage/Available/No data
    • Active issues
    • Affected locations
    • Availability
    • Total downtime
    • Duration
  • A list of problems, including the problem start date and duration, or No problems found. To analyze a problem in the Problems app, select the problem link in the list.
  • A list of changes. In latest Dynatrace, this section displays changes to the monitor: when it was changed, who changed it, and what they changed. You can only access changes from a specified timeframe.
  • Properties such as monitor type, locations, requests in last execution, frequency, steps, and tags.

Use the controls in the upper-right corner of the preview panel to:

  • Edit the selected monitor
  • Delete the selected monitor
  • Enable a disabled monitor
  • Disable an enabled monitor
  • Display the reporting page for the selected monitor (see below)
  • Close the preview panel

Reporting

For each monitor type, you can display a reporting page. See

The goal of private locations is to execute synthetic tests. You need to use private locations for applications and endpoints within corporate networks, which are not available from the public internet. Also, private locations are obligatory for executing NAM tests.

For now, you can create only classic locations using private locations. However, the locations list displays both classic and containerized (for example, Kubernetes and OpenShift) locations.

The Private locations tab of Synthetic Synthetic shows the list of all private locations available within a given environment. For each private location, there's information about how many synthetic monitors are assigned, with necessary links to those monitors.

Create a private location

To add a classic private location

  1. Go to Private locations tab in the upper-left of the Synthetic Synthetic home page.

  2. Select Private locations > Classic.

  3. Name your location, for example, Boston office, 3rd floor.

  4. Map it from an existing geographic location or add a custom location defined by Country, Region, City, Latitude and Longitude.

  5. Add a Synthetic-enabled Existing ActiveGate to the location or Deploy new ActiveGate (adding a new ActiveGate will redirect you to Discovery & Coverage Discovery & Coverage).

    Note that an ActiveGate can only be assigned to a single location.

  6. optional Turn on Enable Chromium auto-update—it will be triggered during Synthetic engine updates at this location.

    You can Enable Chromium auto-update at the location level, that is, for all ActiveGates assigned to a private location. Chromium autoupdate takes place during manual as well as automatic ActiveGate and Synthetic engine updates.

    As we recommend using the latest supported Chromium version for the smooth and secure execution of browser monitors from your private location, Chromium autoupdate is turned on by default for locations with Linux-based ActiveGates. If you don't want Chromium to be updated automatically, for example, to use a specific version of Chromium, or if you have offline environments, turn off the switch before triggering an ActiveGate update.

    This setting only applies to Linux-based ActiveGates; on Windows-based ActiveGates, Chromium is always updated during Synthetic engine updates. If your location has only Windows-based ActiveGates, the toggle is turned on but grayed out.

    Successful Chromium autoupdate requires access to OS (system) repositories for Chromium dependencies and access to https://synthetic-packages.s3.amazonaws.com for Chromium components. If you've enabled a custom local repository, Chromium components (but not dependencies) need to be available at the specified HTTP server address. See Chromium autoupdate from a custom repository.

    You will see a message if Chromium autoupdate fails for this or other reasons—we recommend either meeting the requirements for autoupdate (such as access to repositories) or disabling Chromium autoupdate for your private location.

    Also, check our information on installing Chromium and other dependencies manually (Linux only).

  7. optional If you have outage issues with your private location, use the Location outage handling options to receive related notifications. See the on-screen instructions for details.

  8. Select Save.

Edit a private location

To edit an existing private location

  1. Go to Private locations tab to open the Private Synthetic locations home page.
  2. Select the location name to display the panel on the right.
  3. In the displayed panel, edit the settings.

Learning modules

Go through the following process to learn using the Synthetic Synthetic app:

01Create a NAM monitor
  • How-to guide
  • Learn how to set up a NAM monitor to check the performance and availability of your site.
02Create and configure an HTTP monitor
  • How-to guide
  • Learn how to set up and edit an HTTP monitor to check the performance and availability of your site.
03NAM monitors results reporting
  • Reference
  • View the synthetic monitors in your environment, search for monitors, and get a quick overview of a selected monitor.
04HTTP monitors reporting results
  • Reference
  • Learn about the Synthetic details page for HTTP monitors.
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