Configure OTLP metrics ingestion

Latest Dynatrace
Explanation
5-min read

To make these configuration changes:

In Latest Dynatrace, go to Settings > Process and contextualize > OpenTelemetry metrics.
In Dynatrace Classic, go to Settings > Metrics > OpenTelemetry metrics.

These settings affect your metric dimensions. Modifying any of them will cause your metrics to change, which may have an impact on existing dashboards, events, and alerts that make use of these dimensions. In this case, they will need to be updated manually.

Configure attributes to be dropped

In the section Deny list: all attributes you can configure which attributes to drop from all ingested OTLP metrics.

Upon ingest, the Allow list: resource and scope attributes (Dynatrace Classic only) is applied first. Then, the Deny list: all attributes is applied. The deny list therefore applies to all attributes from all sources (data points, scope, and resource).

You can use the deny list to remove attributes that you deem not relevant for your use case. For example, you can use the deny list to remove high-cardinality attributes that may be added outside your control (e.g., by instrumentation libraries or resource detectors).

Attribute names are case-sensitive and must be configured with the original name, as exported to Dynatrace by the telemetry source and before any possible transformation took place. For example, an attribute named My:attribute will be renamed to my_attribute upon ingestion (see name rules) but still needs to be configured as My:attribute in the settings page.
Dynatrace does not recommend adding attributes starting with dt.* to the deny list. Dynatrace uses these attributes to enrich ingested metrics with Dynatrace-specific dimensions.

Advanced OTLP metric dimensions

Enabling Advanced OTLP metric dimensions activates advanced OpenTelemetry metric capabilities for metrics ingested into Grail. With this feature enabled, Dynatrace ingests all resource, scope, and data-point attributes as metric dimensions by default, except for attributes on the Deny list: all attributes. This means the Allow list: resource and scope attributes setting no longer applies to Grail-ingested metrics when this feature is turned on.

Meter name and version are always added as dimensions (otel.scope.name and otel.scope.version) for Grail-ingested metrics, regardless of the Add Meter name and version as metric dimensions setting.

Relaxed ingestion limits apply when this feature is enabled. See API limits and validations for details.

When you turn on Advanced OTLP metric dimensions, Dynatrace processes Grail-ingested metrics to take full advantage of Grail's storage and query capabilities. This includes using primary fields from ingested metric data to enrich metric dimensions and improve queryability, making additional fields available to support cost-allocation workflows, and providing improved support for queries on high-cardinality dimensions.

Keep in mind that enabling this feature changes how dimensions are handled for your Grail-ingested metrics. You may see new dimensions appear on your metrics that were previously excluded by the Allow list: resource and scope attributes setting, or dimension keys that were previously normalized are now ingested as-is. For example, ingested dimension keys will preserve uppercase characters.

This can increase the cardinality of some metrics and may affect dashboards, charts, alerts, and saved queries that depend on specific dimension sets.

After enabling this feature, review your relevant dashboards and alerts to ensure they still work as expected. You can use the deny list to exclude any unwanted high-cardinality attributes.

After you change the setting, it may take a few minutes for it to take effect across your environment.

Additional configuration for Dynatrace Classic only

Dynatrace Classic users can find additional settings, including the metric dimensions allow list and explicit bucket histogram ingestion, on Configure OTLP metrics ingestion in Dynatrace Classic.