Execute synthetic monitors from private locations

Synthetic-enabled ActiveGates enable you to set up private Synthetic locations from which you can execute synthetic monitors to monitor your internal as well as external resources.

Private synthetic monitoring functionality and Synthetic module

(module: Synthetic)

ActiveGates purposed for Dynatrace Synthetic Monitoring have the Synthetic module enabled.

Synthetic-enabled ActiveGates, along with the Synthetic engine and Chromium, are elements of private Synthetic locations, which are locations in your private network infrastructure.

A private location may consist of one or more Synthetic-enabled ActiveGates. See the requirements and process for setting up private locations. Once set up, you can use the Dynatrace-based management interface for private locations and monitors.

Important hardware and software notes

Synthetic-enabled ActiveGates are more demanding in terms of hardware requirements. See Requirements for private Synthetic locations.

If an ActiveGate runs the Synthetic module, it cannot have any other functional modules enabled. If you were to run any other modules on the same ActiveGate, you might run into a situation where synthetic monitors are executed but other processes overloading the machine have a significant impact on monitor performance metrics, setting off false-positive alerts about performance degradation.

Execute monitors

Any Synthetic-enabled ActiveGate is able to execute both browser as well as HTTP monitors.

Additionally on private locations, capacity usage is tracked separately for high-resource HTTP monitors—these monitors have special resource-intensive features.

To run browser monitors from a private location, you must first satisfy the engine dependencies before you install the Environment or Cluster ActiveGate. See Create a private Synthetic location for detailed instructions.

Use cases

Private locations enable you to run monitors in your internal network when you cannot use Dynatrace public Synthetic locations for synthetic monitoring. With private locations you can:

  • Measure internal web page performance and availability.
  • Measure complex internal applications with browser clickpath monitors.

Additionally, you can also:

  • Measure external resources with synthetic monitors run from internal locations.
  • Monitor APIs, both internal and external.