Migrate ActiveGate

  • Published Dec 07, 2023

There are three main approaches in the migration of ActiveGate from Dynatrace Managed to SaaS:

  1. recommended Concurrent deployment of new ActiveGates on the new hardware
  2. ActiveGate reconfiguration
  3. ActiveGate reinstallation on the same hardware

What are the pros and cons of concurrent deployment of new ActiveGates on the new hardware?

recommended

Pros

Cons

  • Potentially the least possible downtime for monitoring (cut-over is performed agent-side)
  • Can test ActiveGate setup before decommissioning existing setup
  • Could be well suited for highly regulated environments
  • Additional cost of deploying and managing more infrastructure
  • Requires more time
  • May need to re-apply any customizations made to custom.properties and launcheruserconfig.conf

To install a new ActiveGate in parallel on new hardware

  1. Provision new hardware for the ActiveGate from the new SaaS environment.

  2. Backup custom configuration files: custom.properties, launcheruserconfig.conf, and keystore/truststore.

    To learn more about these files, see Configuration properties and parameters of ActiveGate.

  3. Follow the selected ActiveGate installation procedure. Customize the installation command to apply keystore and truststore files.

  4. Stop the ActiveGate.

  5. Add or replace original configuration files: custom.properties, launcheruserconfig.conf to the new ActiveGate installation path.

  6. Start the ActiveGate.

  7. You can uninstall the old ActiveGate after you migrate all OneAgents that reported to it. You can check which OneAgents report to the ActiveGate at OneAgent health overview.

What are the pros and cons of ActiveGate reconfiguration?

Pros

Cons

  • Less downtime and bandwidth (don't need to download and run any installers)
  • Re-use existing infrastructure
  • Avoid re-deploying extension packages
  • Error-prone due to manual configuration modification
  • Possible monitoring gaps without failover for OneAgent
  • Requires environment token rotation

To reconfigure an existing ActiveGate to point OneAgent traffic to the new SaaS environment

  1. Stop the ActiveGate.

  2. Backup configuration files: connectivity.history, config.properties, cluster.properties, custom.properties, launcheruserconfig.conf, and keystore/truststore.

    To learn more about these files, see Configuration properties and parameters of ActiveGate.

  3. Update config.properties with the seedServerUrl and configured=false to your SaaS environment URL.

  4. If you use a load balancer between the ActiveGate and the Dynatrace Managed cluster, and if the --ignore-cluster-runtime parameter was used, remove it from the custom.properties file.

    To learn more, see Reverse proxy or load balancer for ActiveGate.

  5. Modify the authorization.properties file. Replace the current tenantToken field with tenant token collected from the environment you want the ActiveGate to connect to.

  6. Create a new ActiveGate token on the target tenant, and use it to replace the one set in the authorization.properties file (source tenant). Otherwise, the ActiveGate startup fails with the following errors:

    2024-04-12 13:58:46 UTC WARNING [<rtc43848>] [<collector.core>, InitialCollectorSetupPoller] Initial collector setup received with error:REQUEST_REJECTED, reason=Invalid ActiveGate Token source=ANY_SERVER 0x0000000000000000 [Suppressing further messages for 1 hour]
    2024-04-12 13:59:18 UTC INFO    [<rtc43848>] [<WatchDog>, WatchDogImpl] Connected successfully to native watchdog on 127.0.0.1:50000

  7. Start the ActiveGate.

What are the pros and cons of ActiveGate reinstallation on the same hardware?

Pros

Cons

  • Less error-prone, as you don't need to modify existing configuration files
  • Re-use existing infrastructure
  • You can re-use your existing automation tools
  • Downtime when running an installer
  • May need to re-apply any customization made to custom.properties and launcheruserconfig.conf
  • Possible monitoring gaps without failover for OneAgent

To reinstall an ActiveGate on the same hardware to point OneAgent traffic to the new SaaS environment

  1. Make a backup of any custom configuration, including custom.properties and launcheruserconfig.conf. To learn more about these files, see Configuration properties and parameters of ActiveGate.
  2. Uninstall ActiveGate.
  3. Follow the selected ActiveGate installation procedure. Customize the installation command to apply keystore and truststore files.
  4. Stop the ActiveGate.
  5. Add or replace original configuration files: custom.properties, launcheruserconfig.conf to the new ActiveGate installation path.
  6. Start the ActiveGate.