Private synthetic locations

  • Latest Dynatrace
  • How-to guide
  • Published May 28, 2025

The goal of private locations is to execute synthetic tests. You need to use private locations to monitor applications and endpoints within corporate networks, which are unavailable from the public internet. Also, private locations are obligatory for executing NAM tests.

You can create only classic locations using Synthetic Synthetic, although the locations list displays classic and containerized (for example, Kubernetes and OpenShift) locations. If you still need to create a containerized location, you can do it in Settings Classic.

The Private locations tab in 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 to it, with links to those monitors.

If you created a private location in previous Dynatrace, it remains available in latest Dynatrace—there's no need to redeploy it.

For more details about private locations, for example, operating system requirements or setting up a proxy for private synthetic monitoring, see Private Synthetic locations.

Create a private location

To add a classic private location

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

  2. Select Private locations > Classic.

  3. Name your location.

  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) from where you can install an ActiveGate).

    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 the 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 the 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.
Containerized locations

The containerized locations are available only in view mode in the latest Dynatrace. Select Settings Classic to go to the previous Dynatrace and edit the location there.

Location details

Select a location to see its details. The ActiveGates assigned to the location are listed and displayed in red when a Synthetic engine or an ActiveGate itself is offline; the Status column shows a corresponding message. You can add or delete ActiveGates from here.

PrivateLocation_view

Metrics for the health status of each monitor type are available for charting and alerting. For example, choose the following metrics in the Notebooks:

  • Synthetic - HTTP - Engine Utilization
  • Synthetic - HTTP High Resource - Engine Utilization
  • Synthetic - Browser - Engine Utilization We strongly recommend splitting these metrics by location to get an accurate view of location health.

Metric_for_private_location

Location outage handling

For each location, enable the corresponding switches to generate problems when a location or any of its ActiveGate engines are unavailable:

  • You can generate a problem when the entire private location is unavailable (all ActiveGates are offline), or if the location lacks the capability required for the monitor type to be executed.

  • You can generate a problem when a single ActiveGate at this location is offline.

For example, suppose your location has two ActiveGates, and you enable both problem switches. You will see three problems when your location is unavailable—one for the entire location and one for each ActiveGate that's offline.

Containerized locations

For containerized locations, you can only generate a problem when the entire private location is unavailable (all ActiveGates are offline), or if the location lacks the capability required for the monitor type to be executed.

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