Alibaba Cloud extension
- Latest Dynatrace
- Extension
- Published Oct 27, 2025
Automatically discover, baseline, and monitor Alibaba Cloud environment components.
Get started
Overview
Access essential metrics from the Alibaba Console for ECS, SLB, NAS, NAT Gateway, CEN, and VPN services as well as benefit from the enhanced observability through Alibaba tag retrieval.
Use cases
- Monitor the health and performance of the Alibaba Cloud.
- Focus on the compute, storage, and networking foundation of your Alibaba Cloud.
- Ingest Alibaba tags and use them in the Dynatrace Platform.
Requirements
The Alibaba Cloud extension is executed by ActiveGate (remote monitoring). You need to have an ActiveGate provisioned in your environment and networking set up so that the ActiveGate can connect to the Alibaba Cloud tenant you are about to monitor.
Activation and setup
-
Go to Dynatrace Hub
, and activate the Alibaba Cloud extension. -
Provide your Alibaba Cloud monitoring endpoint information:
- Region ID
(<https://www.alibabacloud.com/help/en/cloud-migration-guide-for-beginners/latest/regions-and-zones#concept-nwo-3ho-q3v>) access-key-idandaccess-key-secret(or the associated Dynatrace Vault)
- Region ID
-
To ingest Alibaba tags, provide a Dynatrace Token with the
entities.readandentities.writescope for each endpoint you are about to monitor on your Alibaba Cloud.You need one configuration per region.
Details
The Alibaba Cloud extension collects metrics and topology for:
- AliCloud ECS
- AliCloud SLB
- AliCloud NAT Gateway
- AliCloud CEN
- AliCloud NAS
- AliCloud VPN
Additionally, the extension retrieves Alibaba tags and correlates them with OneAgent entities for enhanced observability.
The Alibaba Cloud extension is packaged with two dashboards that should serve as a starting point for data analysis.
The Alibaba Cloud extension does not cover every single service available on Alibaba Cloud.
Licensing and cost
There is no charge for obtaining the Alibaba Cloud extension; you're only charged for the data that the extension ingests. The details of license consumption depend on which licensing model you are using. This is either the Dynatrace classic licensing or the Dynatrace Platform Subscription (DPS) model.
Metrics
License consumption is based on the number of metric data points ingested. The following formula provides approximate annual data points ingested, assuming all feature sets are enabled.
(( 5 * number of ECS )+ ( 6 * number of SLB )+ ( 4 * number of NatGW )+ ( 4 * number of CEN )+ ( 6 * number of NAS )+ ( 7 * number of VPN )) * 60 minutes * 24 hours * 365 days data points per year
Classic licensing
In the Dynatrace classic licensing model, metric ingestion consumes Davis data units (DDUs) at the rate of .001 DDUs per metric data point.
Multiply the above formula for annual data points by .001 to estimate annual DDU usage.
Feature sets
When activating your extension using monitoring configuration, you can limit monitoring to one of the feature sets. To work properly the extension has to collect at least one metric after the activation.
In highly segmented networks, feature sets can reflect the segments of your environment. Then, when you create a monitoring configuration, you can select a feature set and a corresponding ActiveGate group that can connect to this particular segment.
All metrics that aren't categorized into any feature set are considered to be the default and are always reported.
A metric inherits the feature set of a subgroup, which in turn inherits the feature set of a group. Also, the feature set defined on the metric level overrides the feature set defined on the subgroup level, which in turn overrides the feature set defined on the group level.
cen
| Metric name | Metric key | Description |
|---|---|---|
| Network Internet Bandwidth RX | cloud.alicloud.cen.network.bw_rx_internet | — |
| Network Internet Bandwidth TX | cloud.alicloud.cen.network.bw_tx_internet | — |
| Latency Healthcheck | cloud.alicloud.cen.healthcheck.latency | — |
| Loss Healthcheck | cloud.alicloud.cen.healthcheck.loss | — |
nas
| Metric name | Metric key | Description |
|---|---|---|
| IOPS Read | cloud.alicloud.nas.disk.iops_r | — |
| IOPS Write | cloud.alicloud.nas.disk.iops_w | — |
| Latency Read | cloud.alicloud.nas.disk.latency_r | — |
| Latency Write | cloud.alicloud.nas.disk.latency_w | — |
| Aligned Size | cloud.alicloud.nas.disk.alignedsize | — |
| Secondary Aligned Size | cloud.alicloud.nas.disk.secondaryalignedsize | — |
vpn
| Metric name | Metric key | Description |
|---|---|---|
| SSL Client Count | cloud.alicloud.vpn.ssl.clientcount | — |
| IPsec Bandwidth TX | cloud.alicloud.vpn.network.ipsec.bw_tx | — |
| IPsec Bandwidth RX | cloud.alicloud.vpn.network.ipsec.bw_rx | — |
| Bandwidth TX | cloud.alicloud.vpn.network.bw_tx | — |
| Bandwidth RX | cloud.alicloud.vpn.network.bw_rx | — |
| Bandwidth Utilization TX | cloud.alicloud.vpn.network.bw_utilization_tx | — |
| Bandwidth Utilization RX | cloud.alicloud.vpn.network.bw_utilization_rx | — |
natGateway
| Metric name | Metric key | Description |
|---|---|---|
| Network Bandwidth RX from Outside | cloud.alicloud.nat_gateway.network.bw_rx_from_outside | — |
| Network Bandwidth TX to Outside | cloud.alicloud.nat_gateway.network.bw_tx_to_outside | — |
| Network Bandwidth RX from Inside | cloud.alicloud.nat_gateway.network.bw_rx_from_inside | — |
| Network Bandwidth TX to Inside | cloud.alicloud.nat_gateway.network.bw_tx_to_inside | — |
ecs
| Metric name | Metric key | Description |
|---|---|---|
| CPU Utilization | cloud.alicloud.ecs.cpu_utilization | — |
| RAM Utilization | cloud.alicloud.ecs.memory_utilization | — |
| IO Read | cloud.alicloud.ecs.disk.io_read | — |
| IO Write | cloud.alicloud.ecs.disk.io_write | — |
| Load | cloud.alicloud.ecs.load | — |
| — | cloud.alicloud.ecs.status | — |
slb
| Metric name | Metric key | Description |
|---|---|---|
| Network RX | cloud.alicloud.slb.network.traffic_rx | — |
| Network TX | cloud.alicloud.slb.network.traffic_tx | — |
| Network Drop RX | cloud.alicloud.slb.network.drop_rx | — |
| Network Drop TX | cloud.alicloud.slb.network.drop_tx | — |
| Healthy Server Count | cloud.alicloud.slb.healthyservercount | — |
| Unhealthy Server Count | cloud.alicloud.slb.unhealthyservercount | — |
FAQ
Should I split the monitoring configuration into many instances to scale the Alibaba Cloud extension out?
One monitoring configuration can track one or more Alibaba Cloud instances. Multiple monitoring configurations are not mandatory.
I use a proxy to connect to Alibaba Cloud. How can I enable a proxy connection in the Alibaba Cloud extension?
Proxy support will be integrated in a future extension version.
Does the Alibaba Cloud extension support monitoring of other entities, such as CDNs?
Not yet. We look forward to your feedback on the enhancements that would make this extension better suited to your environment. Post your product idea to the Dynatrace Community, and let others up-vote it!