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Dynatrace’s Carbon Impact App Dynatrace, in collaboration with Lloyds Banking Group, has taken a bold step forward with the Carbon Impact app. This initiative represents a significant advancement in addressing the environmental impact of IT operations. Addressing a critical gap in the tech industry’s approach to environmental responsibility, Klaus Enzenhofer, Product Lead Business Analytics at […]View the full article

In the previous blog post of this series, we discussed the crucial role of Dynatrace as an orchestrator that steps in to stop the testing phase in case of any errors. Additionally, Dynatrace equips SREs and application teams with valuable insights powered by Davis® AI. In this blog post of the series, we will explore the use of Site Reliability Guardian (SRG) in more detail. SRG is a potent tool that automates the analysis of release impacts, ensuring validation of service availability, performance, and capacity objectives throughout the application ecosystem by examining the effect of advanced test suites executed earlier in the testing phase. Validation stage overview The validation stage is a crucial step in the CI/CD (Continuous Integration/Continuous Deployment) process. It involves carefully examining the test results from the previous testing phase. The main goal of this stage is to identify and address any issues or problems that were detected. Doing so reduces the risk of production disruptions and instills confidence in both SREs (Site Reliability Engineers) and end-users. Depending on the outcome of the examination, the build is either approved for deployment to the production environment or rejected. Challenges of the validation stage In the Validation phase, SREs face specific challenges that significantly slow down the CI/CD pipeline. Foremost among these is the complexity associated with data gathering and analysis. The burgeoning reliance on cloud technology stacks amplifies this challenge, creating hurdles due to budgetary constraints, time limitations, and the potential risk of human errors. Additionally, another pivotal challenge arises from the time spent on issue identification. Both SREs and application teams invest substantial time and effort in locating and rectifying software glitches within their local environments. These prolonged processes not only strain resources but also introduce delays within the CI/CD pipeline, hampering the timely release of new features to end-users. Mitigate challenges with Dynatrace With the support of Dynatrace Grail™, AutomationEngine, and the Site Reliability Guardian, SREs and application teams are assisted in making informed release decisions by utilizing telemetry observability and other insights. Additionally, the Visual Resolution Path within generated problem reports helps in reproducing issues in their environments. The Visual Resolution Path offers a chronological overview of events detected by Dynatrace across all components linked to the underlying issue. It incorporates the automatic discovery of newly generated compute resources and any static resources that are in play. This view seamlessly correlates crucial events across all affected components, eliminating the manual effort of sifting through various monitoring tools for infrastructure, process, or service metrics. As a result, businesses and SREs can redirect their manual diagnostic efforts toward fostering innovation. Configure an action for the Site Reliability Guardian in the workflow. The action should focus on validating the guardian’s adherence to the application ecosystem’s specific objectives (SLOs). Additionally, align the action’s validation window with the timeframe derived from the recently completed test events. As the action begins, the Site Reliability Guardian (SRG) evaluates the set objective by analyzing the telemetry data produced during advanced test runs. At the same time, SRG uses DAVIS_EVENTS to identify any potential problems which could result in one of two outcomes. Outcome #1: Build promotion Once the newly developed code is in line with the objectives outlined in the Guardian—and assuming that Davis AI doesn’t generate any new events—the SRG action activates the successful path in the workflow. This path includes a JavaScript action called promote_jenkins_build, which triggers an API call to approve the build being considered, leading to the promotion of the build deployment to production. Outcome #2: Build rejection If Davis AI generates any issue events related to the wider application ecosystem or if any of the objectives configured from the defined guardian are not met, the build rejection workflow is automatically initiated. This triggers the disapprove_jenkins_build JavaScript action, which leads to the rejection of the build. Moreover, by utilizing helpful service analysis tools such as Response Time Hotspots and Outliers, SREs can easily identify the root cause of any issues and save considerable time that would otherwise be spent on debugging or taking necessary actions. SREs can also make use of the Visual Resolution Path to recreate the issues on their setup or identify the events for different components that led to the issue. In both scenarios, a Slack message is sent to the SREs and the impacted app team, capturing the build promotion or rejection.The telemetry data’s automated analytics, powered by SRG and Davis AI, simplify the process of promoting builds. This approach effectively tackles the challenges that come with complex application ecosystems. Additionally, the integration of service tools and Visual Resolution Path helps to identify and fix issues more quickly, resulting in an improved mean time to repair (MTTR). Validation in the platform engineering context Dynatrace—essential within the realm of platform engineering—streamlines the validation process, providing critical insights into performance metrics and automating the identification of build failures. By leveraging SRG and Visual Resolution Path, along with Davis AI causal analysis, development teams can quickly pinpoint issues, and further rectify them ensuring a fail-smart approach. The integration of service analysis tools further enhances the validation phase by automating code-level inspections and facilitating timely resolutions. Through these orchestrated efforts, platform engineering promotes a collaborative environment, enabling more efficient validation cycles and fostering continuous enhancement in software quality and delivery. In conclusion, the integration of Dynatrace observability provides several advantages for SREs and DevOps, enabling them to enhance the key DORA metrics: Deployment Frequency: Improved deployment rate through faster and more informed decision-making. SREs gain visibility into each stage, allowing them to build faster and promptly address issues using the Dynatrace feature set. Change Lead Time: Enhanced efficiency across stages with Dynatrace observability and security tools, leading to quicker postmortems and fewer interruption calls for SREs. Change Failure Rate: Reduction in incidents and rollbacks achieved by utilizing “Configuration Change” events or deployment and annotation events in Dynatrace. This enables SREs to allocate their time more effectively to proactively address actual issues instead of debugging underlying problems. Time to restore service: While these proactive approaches can help improve Deployment Frequency and Change Lead Time, telemetry observability data with Dynatrace AI causation engine Davis AI can aid in improving Time to restore service. In addition, Dynatrace can leverage the events and telemetry data that it receives during the Continuous Integration/Continuous Deployment (CI/CD) pipeline to construct dashboards. By using JavaScript and DQL, these dashboards can help generate reports on the current DORA metrics. This method can be expanded to gain a better understanding of the SRG executions, enabling us to pinpoint the responsible guardians and the SLOs managed by various teams and identify any instances of failure. Addressing such failures can lead to improvements and further enhance the DORA metrics. Below is a sample dashboard that provides insights into DORA and SRG execution. In the next blog post, we’ll discuss the integration of security modules into the DevOps process with the aim of achieving DevSecOps. Additionally, we’ ll explore the incorporation of Chaos Engineering during the testing stage to enhance the overall reliability of the DevSecOps cycle. We’ll ensure that these efforts don’t affect the Time to Restore Service turnaround build time and examine how we can improve the fifth key DORA metric, Reliability. What’s next? Curious to see how it all works? Contact us to schedule a demo and we’ll walk you through the various workflows, JavaScript tasks, and the dashboards discussed in this blog series. Contact us to schedule a demo and we’ll walk you through the various workflows, JavaScript tasks, and the dashboards discussed in this blog series. Contact Sales If you’re an existing Dynatrace Managed customer looking to upgrade to Dynatrace SaaS, see How to start your journey to Dynatrace SaaS. The post Automate CI/CD pipelines with Dynatrace: Part 4, Validation stage appeared first on Dynatrace news. View the full article

While customers use observability platforms to identify issues in cloud environments, the next chapter of value is removing manual work from processes and building IT automation into their organizations. At the Dynatrace Innovate conference in Barcelona, Bernd Greifeneder, Dynatrace chief technology officer, discussed key examples of how the Dynatrace observability platform delivers value well beyond traditional monitoring. While the Dynatrace observability platform has long delivered return on investment for customers in identifying root cause, it has evolved to address far more use cases for observability and security, to address customers’ specific needs. Bernd Greifeneder outlines key use cases for IT automation at Dynatrace Innovate. “How do we make the data accessible beyond the use cases that Dynatrace gives you, beyond observability and security?” Greifeneder said. “You have business use cases that are unique to your situation that we can’t anticipate.” Greifeneder noted that now, with Dynatrace AutomationEngine, which triggers automated workflows, teams can mature beyond executing tasks manually. They can be proactive in identifying issues in cloud environments. “It allows you to take answers into automation, into action, whether It’s predictive or reactive,” Greifeneder explained. The road to modern observability As organizations continue to operate in the cloud, they discover that cloud observability becomes paramount to their ability to run efficiently and securely. Observability can help them identify problems in their cloud environments and provide information about the precise root cause of a problem. For Dynatrace customers, identifying root cause comes via Davis AI, the Grail data lakehouse, which unifies data silos, and Smartscape, which topologically maps all cloud entities and relationships. As a result, customers can identify the precise source of issues in their multi- and hybrid cloud environments. But as Greifeneder noted, “just having the answers alone isn’t enough.” Organizations need to incorporate IT automation into their processes to take action on the data they gather. As customers continue to operate in the cloud, their needs for efficiency and cost-effectiveness only grow. As a result, they need to build in greater efficiency through IT automation. Data suggests that companies have come to recognize the importance of building in this efficiency. According to Deloitte’s global survey of executives, 73% of respondents said their organizations have embarked on a path to intelligent automation. “That’s why we added to Dynatrace AutomationEngine, to run workflows, or use code to automate,” Greifeneder explained. “It allows you to take answers into automation, into action, whether It’s predictive or reactive. Both are possible, tied to business or technical value–It’s all there,” he said. This is precisely how executives anticipate getting value out of IT in the coming years. Indeed, according to a Gartner 2022 survey, 80% of executives believe that AI can be applied to any business decision. Three use cases for IT automation and optimization: How Dynatrace uses Dynatrace 1. Developer observability as a service. For developers, IT automation can bring significant productivity boosts in software development. According to one recent survey, 71% of respondents said that building out developer automation was a key initiative. With Grail, for example, a DevOps team can pre-scan logs. The plattorm can pre-analyze and classify logs . With this process, DevOps teams can identify whether code includes a high-priority bug that has to be fixed immediately. By taking this approach, Dynatrace itself reduced bugs by 36% before flaws arrived in production-level code. 2. Security. As security threats continue to mount, it’s impossible for teams to identify threats with manual work alone. “Security has to be automated,” As Greifeneder noted, identifying threats quickly is critical to prevent applications and data from being compromised. “When there is something urgent, every second matters,” Greifeneder said. He noted that Dynatrace teams used the platform to reduce time spent identifying and resolving security issues. By unifying all relevant events in Grail, teams could identify suspicious activity, then have the platform automatically trigger the steps to analyze those activities. Next, the platform can automatically classify activities that needed immediate action or route information to the right team to take action. As Greifeneder noted, Dynatrace teams reduced the entire process of identifying and addressing security vulnerabilities from days to minutes. “This is massive improvement of security and massive productivity gain.” Greifeneder noted. Moreover, data is scattered and needs to be unified. “All security data is in silos.” The goal for modern observability is to automate the process of identifying suspicious activity. The Dynatrace platform uses AutomationEngine and workflows, automatically triggering steps to analyze threats. 3. Data-driven cloud optimization. In this use case, Greifeneder said, the goal was to optimize the Dynatrace platform itself and make it “as performant and cost-effective” for customers as possible. The Dynatrace team gathered cloud billing data, infrastructure data, networking data, and analyzed that data in Dynatrace Notebooks. As a result, the team found that cloud architecture had resulted in overprovisioning of resources. By analyzing the data in Dynatrace Notebooks, the team discovered, “There is too much cross-availability-zone traffic,” Greifeneder recalled. “There are way over 30 availability zones. By running those queries team found that theycould not only reduce data transfer costs but also reduce the monthly data volume by 23 petabytes–that’s massive and brings an even higher-performant Grail to you. These are both wins—business and technical.” As Greifeneder noted in the session, these new capabilities are designed to enable customers to extract greater value from the platform through multiple uses. As Greifeneder noted, the data residing in the unified platform enables a variety of uses. “It was you as customers who told me,’ Dynatrace’s data is gold.’” The post Bringing IT automation to life at Dynatrace Innovate Barcelona appeared first on Dynatrace news. View the full article

The Dynatrace Master Certification is a journey that leads to industry recognition of your current skills, competencies, and experience. To become certified as a Dynatrace Master in a defined platform, you will need to demonstrate that you are a true master of the entire platform, from the design, execution, and troubleshooting of an installation of the platform, through the use of the platform in a sophisticated set of application problem scenarios... View the full article

Dynatrace Professional Certification validates that you have knowledge of the Dynatrace infrastructure, installation and configuration, data collection and analysis, integration points, and visualization concepts. This page provides the content and context of the Dynatrace Professional Certification. Please review this information in its entirety to gain a thorough understanding of exam expectations and requirements... View the full article

The Dynatrace Associate Certification validates that you have knowledge of the Dynatrace infrastructure, system capabilities and components, support technologies, reporting, and analysis features and concepts... View the full article

Dynatrace offers three levels of certification: Dynatrace Associate: This certification validates that you have the knowledge and skills to use Dynatrace to monitor the performance and health of applications and infrastructure. Dynatrace Professional: This certification validates that you have the knowledge and skills to use Dynatrace to troubleshoot and optimize applications and infrastructure. Dynatrace Master: This certification validates that you have the deep knowledge and skills to use Dynatrace to design and implement a comprehensive observability strategy. To earn a Dynatrace certification, you must pass an online exam. The exams are designed to assess your knowledge and skills in using Dynatrace to monitor, troubleshoot, and optimize applications and infrastructure... View the full article

A DQL query contains at least one or more commands, each of which returns tabular output containing records (lines or rows) and fields (columns). All commands are sequenced by a | (pipe). The data flows or is funneled from one command to the next. The data is filtered or manipulated at each step and then streamed into the following step... View the full article

Dynatrace is a software intelligence company that provides application performance management (APM), artificial intelligence for operations (AIOps), cloud infrastructure monitoring, and digital experience management solutions. Here’s a breakdown of what Dynatrace offers: Application Performance Management (APM): Dynatrace monitors and optimizes the performance of applications. This ensures that software applications run smoothly and efficiently. APM tools can help identify bottlenecks, slowdowns, or failures in software applications. Artificial Intelligence for Operations (AIOps): Dynatrace uses AI to automatically detect, diagnose, and prioritize anomalies in software applications and infrastructure. This helps organizations to proactively address issues before they impact users or the business. Cloud Infrastructure Monitoring: As organizations move to cloud-based infrastructures, monitoring the performance and health of these environments becomes critical. Dynatrace provides insights into cloud platforms, containers, and orchestration tools. Digital Experience Monitoring: This involves understanding how users are experiencing an application. For instance, if a user encounters a slow-loading webpage or an error during a checkout process on an e-commerce site, this impacts their digital experience. Dynatrace can track and optimize these user experiences across web, mobile, and other digital channels. Automation and Integration: Dynatrace can be integrated into CI/CD pipelines to ensure that performance issues are caught early in the development lifecycle. This aids in the automation of the software delivery process, ensuring that applications are not only functionally correct but also optimized for performance. Full-Stack Monitoring: One of the hallmarks of Dynatrace is its ability to provide insights from the application layer down to the infrastructure, covering the entire technology stack. This holistic view ensures that no aspect of an application’s performance is overlooked. OneAgent: This is Dynatrace’s proprietary monitoring agent that collects data from the various components of an application and its infrastructure. OneAgent simplifies the data collection process, making it easier to gain insights into the system’s performance. How DevOpsSchool’s dynatrace course are best? DevOpsSchool’s Dynatrace courses are highly rated by students and are considered to be among the best in the industry. Here are some of the reasons why: Comprehensive and up-to-date curriculum: The courses cover all aspects of Dynatrace, from basic concepts to advanced features. The curriculum is also regularly updated to reflect the latest changes to the Dynatrace platform. Experienced and knowledgeable instructors: The instructors at DevOpsSchool are experienced Dynatrace professionals with a deep understanding of the platform. They are also passionate about teaching and helping students learn. Interactive and hands-on training: The courses are designed to be interactive and hands-on, with plenty of opportunities for students to practice what they are learning. This helps students to develop the skills and knowledge they need to use Dynatrace effectively in their jobs. Real-world case studies and examples: The courses use real-world case studies and examples to illustrate the concepts and features of Dynatrace. This helps students to understand how Dynatrace can be used to solve real-world problems. Affordable pricing: The Dynatrace courses at DevOpsSchool are very affordable, especially when compared to other training providers. In addition to the above, DevOpsSchool also offers the following benefits: Flexible training options: DevOpsSchool offers both online and in-person training options. This allows students to choose the format that best suits their needs and schedule. Lifetime support: DevOpsSchool provides lifetime support to all of its students. This means that students can contact the instructors with any questions or problems they have, even after they have completed the course. How DevOpsSchool’s training would help dynatrace certification? “DevOpsSchool” is known as a training and tutorial platform that offers various IT and DevOps-related courses. If DevOpsSchool provides training specifically tailored to Dynatrace, then such training can indeed be beneficial for those aiming to achieve Dynatrace certification or enhance their skills in using the Dynatrace platform. Here’s how a DevOpsSchool training (or any reputable training program) might help in preparing for a Dynatrace certification: Curriculum Alignment: A good training program will have its curriculum aligned with the certification’s objectives, ensuring that students cover all the necessary topics. Hands-on Labs: Practical experience is invaluable. DevOpsSchool’s training might provide hands-on labs where students can practice setting up, configuring, and using Dynatrace in real-world scenarios. Expert Instructors: A knowledgeable instructor can provide insights, best practices, and clarifications that might not be available in standard study materials. Study Materials: Apart from the training sessions, supplementary materials like notes, slide decks, and references can be provided for a holistic learning experience. Mock Exams: Simulated exams can help students get a feel for the certification test, allowing them to gauge their preparedness and adjust their study approach if needed. Interactive Q&A: During the training, having the chance to ask questions and interact with the instructor and peers can help clarify doubts and enhance understanding. Real-World Scenarios: A good training session will often discuss real-world scenarios, challenges, and solutions, which can be crucial for applying knowledge in practical situations and might also be touched upon in the certification exam. Continuous Updates: The world of IT and APM tools like Dynatrace evolves rapidly. Regularly updated training materials ensure that students are preparing with the latest information and best practices. Community & Networking: Joining a course like one from DevOpsSchool might provide opportunities to network with fellow professionals, share experiences, and learn from others. Post-Training Support: Some training providers offer support even after the training session is over. This can be in the form of doubt-clearance, forums, or additional resources. The post Best Dynatrace online training and certification appeared first on DevOpsSchool.com. View the full article

Dynatrace found investments in automation have improved software quality, reduced deployment failures and decreased IT costs. View the full article

Dynatrace has extended the Application Security Module it provides for its observability platform to protect against vulnerabilities in runtime environments, including the Java Virtual Machine (JVM), Node.js runtime and .NET CLR. In addition, Dynatrace has extended its support to applications built using the Go programming language. The Dynatrace Application Security Module leverages existing Dynatrace tracing […] View the full article

Dynatrace has enhanced its analytics capabilities to enable digital experience monitoring, including session replays, based on the logs, metrics and traces it collects via its observability platform. Steve Tack, senior vice president of product management at Dynatrace, said this update makes it simpler for DevOps teams to track user journeys across the multiple components and […] The post Dynatrace Embeds DX Monitoring in Observability Platform appeared first on DevOps.com. View the full article

Deloitte has expanded its cloud observability practice to include the Dynatrace Software Intelligence platform. Jay McDonald, managing director and co-chair for modern delivery at Deloitte, said the IT services provider will now provide traditional DevOps and observability consulting expertise along with a set of instances of the Dynatrace Software Intelligence Platform that it will manage […] The post Deloitte Aligns with Dynatrace for Observability appeared first on DevOps.com. View the full article

Dynatrace today extended the application release management capabilities it provides to include synthetic tests for validating and assuring user experiences. Saif Gunja, director of product marketing for Dynatrace, said the user experience validation and user experience assurance (UXA) capability spans everything from application availability and performance to actual engagement with specific features based on the […] View the full article

As adoption of public cloud grows by leaps and bounds, organizations want to leverage software and services that they love and are familiar with as a part of their overall cloud solution. Microsoft Azure enables customers to host their apps on the globally trusted cloud platform and use the services of their choice by closely partnering with popular SaaS offerings. Dynatrace is one such partner that provides deep cloud observability, advanced AIOps, and continuous runtime application security capabilities on Azure... View the full article

Do you wish you could use CloudWatch, but don't want to go all-in on AWS products? There's AWS Lambda, EKS, ECS, CloudWatch and more. View the full article