Resource attributes

Reference
6-min read

Host-level resource attributes

All monitoring artifacts that leave a given host, that is have the host as its resource, are enriched with the host-level resource attributes.

Host-level resource attributes are resource attributes of monitored hosts. All events raised by and measurements coming from OneAgent components running on a given host are enriched with those attributes. You can then use them in your queries to structure and filter the monitoring data.

You can also use some of the attributes to create policies to manage data access. See Unavailable in Dynatrace Managed and search for fields tagged as Permission

If you have access to a host with OneAgent installed, you can inspect the dt_host_metadata.json and dt_host_metadata.properties to see the scope of resource attributes enrichment provided by OneAgent. For more information, see Enrich ingested data with Dynatrace-specific fields.

Custom host-level attributes

You can create your own attributes by configuring key-value tags and properties set via oneagentctl or through Remote configuration management of OneAgents and ActiveGates. Custom tags and properties defined this way are reported as flat, first-level resource attributes.

The key tags with no value are ignored.

Tags assigned through automated rules, environment variables, and Topology and Smartscape API are not included.

General host-level attributes

Attribute	Description
Custom host tags	See Custom attributes
`dt.host_group.id`	Note that difference between `dt.entity.host_group` and `dt.host_group.id`: `dt.host_group.id` is a name of the host group. It's human-readable host group identifier, for example `MyHostGroup`. `dt.entity.host_group` is an identifier of host group entity in Dynatrace model. The identifier of the entity is not the same as the human readable identifier of the host group. It's created automatically and its format is for example `HOST_GROUP-008786529C8EE446`. For more information, see Organize your environment using host groups.
`dt.entity.host`	An entity ID of an entity of type HOST.
`dt.entity.host_group`	An entity ID of an entity of type `HOST_GROUP`.
`host.name`	The host name as determined depending on the data source, for example OneAgent, Extensions, or OpenTelemetry. Host name can be modified based on naming rules. Note that this not an entity ID of an entity of type `HOST` (`dt.entity.host`).

AWS

Attribute	Description
`dt.entity.ec2_instance`	An entity ID of an entity of type `EC2_INSTANCE`.
`dt.entity.aws_availability_zone`	An entity ID of an entity of type `AWS_AVAILABILITY_ZONE`.
`aws.availability_zone`	A specific availability zone in given AWS Region. For example, `us‑east‑1a`.
`aws.region`	A specific geographical AWS Cloud location. For example, `us‑east‑1`.
`aws.resource.id`	The unique identifier of the resource.

Azure

Attribute	Description
`dt.entity.azure_vm`	An entity ID of an entity of type `AZURE_VM`, retrieved from the `instanceId` field of Azure instance metadata.
`dt.entity.azure_region`	An entity ID of an entity of type `AZURE_REGION`.
`azure.location`	A specific geographical location of Azure Cloud resource, retrieved from the `location` field of Azure instance metadata.
`azure.vmid`	Azure Virtual Machine unique 128bits identifier.

Google Cloud

Attribute	Description
`gcp.instance.id`	A permanent identifier that is unique within your Google Cloud project.
`gcp.project.id`	The identifier of the GCP project associated with this resource.
`dt.entity.gcp_zone`	An entity ID of an entity of type `GCP_ZONE`.
`gcp.zone`	A zone is a subset of a region. Each region has three or more zones. For example, `europe-west3-c`.
`gcp.region`	A region is a specific geographical location where you can host your resources. For example, `europe-west3`.

OpenStack

Attribute	Description
`openstack.availability_zone`	A specific availability zone in a given OpenStack region. For example, `us-east-1a`.
`openstack.instance_uuid`	UUID of an OpenStack instance.

Kubernetes

Attribute	Description
`k8s.cluster.uid`	As the Kubernetes cluster name is not readily available, Dynatrace identifies the cluster by the UID of the kube-system namespace. Available only in Dynatrace Operator deployments.
`k8s.node.name`	A Kubernetes name of the Node. Available only in Dynatrace Operator deployments.

BOSH

Attribute	Description
`bosh.instance_id`	A unique identifier assigned to each deployed BOSH instance.
`bosh.availability_zone`	A specific geographical BOSH location. For example, `us-east-1a`.
`bosh.name`	A unique identifier to a deployment or instance.

Resource attributes normalization

To ensure consistent and reliable metric ingestion, resource attributes normalization is applied to all relevant internal metric keys and values. This process helps prevent metrics from being dropped due to invalid or malformed dimensions.

Dimension key rules

Rule description	Details
Invalid Characters	An invalid character or a series of invalid characters is replaced with one underscore `_`. For example, `zaó$%ć` is replaced with `za_`.
Empty Keys	Dimensions with no valid characters are skipped
Key Length Limit	OneAgent version 1.317+ Max. 350 characters (previously max. 100 characters)

Dimension value rules

Rule description	Details
Allowed Characters	All non-control characters (ASCII & Unicode)
Control Characters	Not allowed. A control character (that is a character used as an instruction and is not displayed; for example, line break, tab) or a series of those characters is replaced with one underscore `_`.
Value Length Limit	OneAgent version 1.313+ Max. 2048 characters (previously max. 255 characters)
Quoted Values	If value starts and ends with `"`, it is escaped

Dimension limits

To align with the current specification, a specific dimension hierarchy and defined limits are used to prevent warnings and metric drops caused by exceeding those limits.

By default, the global dimension limit is equal to 100 and the customer-defined dimension limit is 40% of the global limit.