Ensure that the host you want to use for your private location complies with the following requirements. Note that a Synthetic-enabled ActiveGate has more demanding hardware and system requirements than a regular Environment or Cluster ActiveGate. Dynatrace strongly recommends using a Synthetic-enabled ActiveGate exclusively for synthetic monitoring purposes.
Antivirus and anti-malware software can adversely affect Dynatrace Synthetic monitoring capabilities. The antivirus or anti-malware software might block the Chromium browser or Dynatrace processes responsible for executing synthetic monitors, cause Synthetic-enabled ActiveGate installation failures, interfere with network communication, and impact the reliability of measurements.
To ensure proper stability and performance, consider adding directories and processes to the allowed list or excluding them from the policy. Collaborate with your vendor to appropriately allow expected behaviors from Dynatrace.
Prior to contacting Dynatrace support to troubleshoot issues with your private synthetic locations make sure that antivirus or anti-malware software was excluded as a source of problems.
A freshly installed ActiveGate can run your private synthetic monitors (both HTTP and browser monitors) on the following operating systems.
On Windows, the ActiveGate installer package includes the Chromium browser used to run browser monitors. The table below shows the Chromium versions that are bundled with the respective ActiveGate versions.
If you only want to test private Synthetic locations on a non-production host, for example, your own desktop, you can install a Synthetic-enabled ActiveGate on unsupported Windows versions such as Windows 10 or Windows 11.
As of ActiveGate version 1.263+, Synthetic-enabled ActiveGate no longer works on Windows Server 2012 for testing purposes. Google has dropped support for Windows 2012 Server with Chromium 110, which is bundled with the ActiveGate version 1.263 installation package.
The Synthetic installer can be installed on all minor releases of Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7, 8, and 9. However, we recommend using the versions listed in this table, as they have Extended Life-cycle Support (ELS) according to Red Hat Enterprise Linux Life Cycle.
We strongly recommend that you keep your Linux-based Synthetic-enabled ActiveGates and Chromium versions updated—Dynatrace supports Chromium versions that are no more than two versions behind the latest Dynatrace-supported version for a specific ActiveGate release. For example, if the latest supported Chromium version is 103, Dynatrace supports up to Chromium version 101. If the provided Chromium version is significantly older for a specific OS, we support only the provided version. See information on updating Chromium automatically and manually.
On Linux, the ActiveGate installer downloads the Chromium dependencies that are required by the Synthetic engine. On Red Hat, CentOS and Rocky, you need to enable particular repositories from which the installer downloads the dependencies. The Dynatrace web UI provides you with all the required commands. For detailed instructions, see Create a private synthetic location.
When installing ActiveGate and Chromium from a custom, local repository, you need to resolve all dependencies and enable repositories as required; the custom repository can be used only for Chromium packages, not their dependencies. Place the Chromium package archive and the signature file in the custom repository for installation. If your package archive file is https://synthetic-packages.s3.amazonaws.com/Chromium/snap/chromium-107.0.5304.87-2168.tgz (Chromium 107 for Ubuntu 20 and 22 on ActiveGate version 1.255), you can find the signature file by appending .sig to the URL: https://synthetic-packages.s3.amazonaws.com/Chromium/snap/chromium-107.0.5304.87-2168.tgz.sig.
Introduced support for Red Hat 9.0 and Oracle Linux 8.8.
Introduced support for Rocky Linux 8 and Rocky Linux 9.
Introduced support for Amazon Linux 2023.
Based on the number of tests executed per hour, Synthetic-enabled ActiveGates need to meet the following hardware requirements.
Not recommended for Windows Server-based ActiveGates because of increased hardware requirements for Chromium.
This is just a minimal requirement. We recommend at least 25 GB of free disk space and 8 GB RAM because of the enhancements planned for future releases.
Calculated as 5000 monitor executions (maximum for a single environment) run once every minute (maximum frequency).
These are HTTP monitors on private locations with any of: pre- or post-execution scripts, OAuth2 authorization, Kerberos authentication.
For NAM monitors using ICMP request type, capacity is related to number of ICMP echo requests (packets) that are being sent during monitors execution. As this number of packets-to-be-sent may significantly vary among defined monitors, using the number of monitor executions as a capacity limit would be inaccurate.
For NAM monitors using TCP and DNS request types, capacity is related to the number of network connections (requests) that are being sent during monitors execution. As this number of requests may significantly vary among defined monitors, using the number of monitor executions as a capacity limit would be inaccurate.
During load tests that helped to establish capacity limits, NAM ICMP monitors were exclusively scheduled on location; monitors had the following characteristic. Actual capacity may be different for other environments (for example, those where monitored targets respond slower or are failing to provide a response within timeout limit or other type of monitors are executed at the same time).
Monitors were using default settings (including default timeouts settings and single packet per-request) and were scheduled every 1 minute.
There were multiple target hosts used during tests; all of them were responding properly with average RTT around 200ms.
During load tests that helped to establish capacity limits, NAM TCP monitors were exclusively scheduled on location; monitors had the following characteristic. Actual capacity may be different for other environments (for example, those where monitored targets respond slower or are failing to provide a response within timeout limit or other type of monitors are executed at the same time).
Monitors were using default settings (including default timeouts settings) and were scheduled every 1 minute.
There were multiple target hosts and ports used during tests; all of them were responding properly with average TCP connection time around 200ms.
During load tests that helped to establish capacity limits, NAM DNS monitors were exclusively scheduled on location; monitors had the following characteristic. Actual capacity may be different for other environments (for example, those where monitored targets respond slower or are failing to provide a response within timeout limit or other type of monitors are executed at the same time). Please note that DNS server used during resolution should be able to handle incoming requests and may not consider the incoming traffic as a subject to throttling or rejection (for example, due to detection as bot-originated).
Monitors were using default settings (including default timeouts settings and UDP as a transport) and were scheduled every 1 minute.
There were multiple resolution targets used during tests; all of them were resolved properly with average DNS resolution time around 10ms.
Publicly available DNS servers were used: Google (8.8.8.8 and 8.8.4.4) and Cloudflare (1.1.1.1 and 1.1.1.2)
The estimated limits listed in the table above were determined in our internal tests. The actual values might vary depending on the complexity of your monitors.
You need to uninstall and reinstall your Synthetic-enabled ActiveGate to change its size, for example, after increasing the resources of your S-sized ActiveGate to meet the requirements for a size M. Reinstallation is required before you can make use of the updated resources for synthetic monitoring; otherwise, your ActiveGate will continue to show up as size S (Synthetic Node size) in Deployment Status and will be subject to the execution limits of size S.
The table below shows the default installation locations (Linux and Windows) of various ActiveGate directories and the minimum size requirements. This information is compiled from details in ActiveGate directories.
Installation parameter
Default path
Min. size
Notes
<INSTALL>
/opt/dynatrace/%PROGRAMFILES%\dynatrace600 MB
For executable files, libraries, and related files
<LOGS>
/var/log/dynatrace%PROGRAMDATA%\dynatrace1.7 GB
<CONFIG>
/var/lib/dynatrace%PROGRAMDATA%\dynatrace1 MB
<TEMP>
/var/tmp/dynatrace%PROGRAMDATA%\dynatrace21 GB1
For an XS ActiveGate—more space is required for execution logs on larger ActiveGates.