Hardware and system requirements for routing/monitoring ActiveGates on Linux

4-min read

Hardware and system requirements: Routing OneAgent traffic to Dynatrace, monitoring cloud environments, or monitoring remote technologies with extensions

For hardware and system requirements for other ActiveGate purposes, see:

Hardware and system requirements for Synthetic-enabled ActiveGates, which support a subset of operating systems and are more demanding in terms of hardware and system requirements than ActiveGates that are used for routing and monitoring.
Hardware and system requirements for the zRemote module for z/OS monitoring. ActiveGates running the zRemote module are more demanding in terms of hardware and system requirements than are ActiveGates that are used for routing and monitoring purposes.

Run ActiveGate on dedicated system

For optimal performance and enhanced security, we recommend installing and running ActiveGate on a dedicated system. Utilizing ActiveGate on a dedicated system not only minimizes the risk of compromising ActiveGate authentication data but also reduces the potential for malicious configuration manipulation.

Refer to the Log Monitoring default limits (Logs Classic) doc page for detailed log throughput characteristics on Environmental Active Gate for logs ingest API.

Hardware requirements

You need a machine dedicated to ActiveGate that has:

4 GB free disk space for ActiveGate and Extensions installation, configuration, and logs for auto update purposes.
4 GB for ActiveGate and OneAgent cached installers and container images—if such will need to be stored.
Space for dump files—if such will need to be stored. This functionality is turned off by default, but can be turned on in ActiveGate configuration. The maximum size of the storage space is configurable—100 GB by default.
600 MB + 1.5 GB (buffer) of free disk space for Extension Execution Controller logs retransmission persistence file.
Space for extension uploads—depending on extensions used.
2 GB RAM (4 GB recommended).
1 dual core processor.

For large environments, you may need to use a machine with additional CPU and memory.

Space requirements per directory

Space allocation per directory, for installation purposes:
(for more detailed allocation, refer to ActiveGate directories)

Space allocation per directory, for ActiveGate operation:
(for more detailed allocation, refer to ActiveGate directories)

The reliability mechanism does not work if the requirement is not met. Extra 1.5 GB required as a buffer. For more information see Persistence details.

Persistence details

The reliability mechanism ensures the persistence of Extension Execution Controller (EEC) logs in case ActiveGate or OneAgent is unavailable, there are network problems, or EEC experiences a data ingest overload. This minimizes gaps in log coverage.

General information

Persistent storage of data requires 2136 MB of free disk space:
- 600 MB of free disk space to be used by the reliability mechanism
- 1.5 GB of free disk space to be used as a buffer
The requirement is checked periodically, and if not met, the persistence will be turned off and log ingestion will be transmitted without the reliability mechanism.
The volume is used proportionally to the load of logs ingest.
If the requirement can't be met on the host, you can modify the configuration of logs persistence. For more information, see Persistence configuration.

Configuration

Windows configuration file: C:\ProgramData\dynatrace\remotepluginmodule\agent\conf\extensionsuser.conf

Linux configuration file: /var/lib/dynatrace/remotepluginmodule/agent/conf/extensionsuser.conf

Supported operating systems

Routing-monitoring ActiveGates

Linux distribution	Versions	CPU architectures
Amazon Linux	2, 2023¹	ARM64 (AArch64), x86-64
Oracle Linux	8.10, 9.6, 9.7, 10.0, 10.1	ARM64 (AArch64), x86-64
Red Hat Enterprise Linux	8.10, 9.4, 9.6, 9.7, 10.0, 10.1	ARM64 (AArch64), s390, x86-64
Rocky Linux	8.10, 9.6, 9.7, 10.0, 10.1	ARM64 (AArch64), x86-64
SUSE Enterprise Linux	15.6, 15.7	ARM64 (AArch64), s390, x86-64
Ubuntu	16.04, 18.04, 20.04, 22.04, 24.04	x86-64
Ubuntu	20.04, 22.04, 24.04	ARM64 (AArch64), s390

To run ActiveGate extensions on Amazon Linux 2023, versions 315 and earlier require manual installation of the 'libcrypt.so.1' library from the 'libxcrypt-compat.rpm' package, which is not installed by default.

ActiveGate installed on the x86-64 architecture supports all functionalities. Other architectures provide only partial support. For details, see ActiveGate purposes and functionality.

ActiveGates running synthetic monitors from a private location

For ActiveGates running synthetic monitors from a private location, see Requirements for private Synthetic location: Linux: Supported operating systems.

ActiveGates with the zRemote module

For ActiveGates with the zRemote module, see Install the zRemote module: System requirements: Supported operating systems.

System requirements

Ensure that you have proper network port configuration.
Your operating system must handle at least 500,000 open files for the dtuserag user.
To view the system limit, execute the following command:
```
[user@host]# cat /proc/sys/fs/file-max
```
Also, it may be that you've checked out too many open files in Linux.
Your operating system must have at least 20,000 processes available to the dtuserag user.
To view the system limit, execute the following command:
```
[user@host]# cat /proc/sys/kernel/pid_max
```
The ActiveGate Linux installer doesn't support ACL (Access Control List). ACL rules may prohibit access to installer-created directories and files, making the ActiveGate fail to start. If you use the ACL, rules related to the installation directories defined in the following parameters should be disabled:
```
INSTALL=
CONFIG=
LOG=
TEMP=
PACKAGES_DIR=
```

Sizing guide

The following table represents the machine instance size requirement based on number of OneAgents communicating with the ActiveGate. On each host, OneAgent is performing eight monitoring tasks:

Infrastructure monitoring
Log monitoring
Full-stack monitoring of 3 Apache Tomcat instances
Full-stack monitoring of 2 Apache HTTP Server instances
Extension monitoring

The real number of hosts may be different depending on the monitored technologies in your environment. It is recommended that the machine on which ActiveGate is running should not exceed 50% CPU and 80% memory. Additionally, it must be assumed that ActiveGates may be inoperable during updates, restarts or short communication problems. In order to ensure high availability, operating ActiveGates should be able to takeover traffic of the unavailable ActiveGates

x86-64 architecture

The C6i machine instances and the estimates:

ARM64 (AArch64) architecture

The C7g machine instances and the estimates:

s390 architecture

Machine sizes and estimates: