Dynatrace for Mendix Cloud

Last modified: October 1, 2024

Introduction

Dynatrace is a monitoring and analysis tool for cloud applications. It is a SaaS-based data analytics platform that provides monitoring for servers, databases, tools, and services. This document explains how to configure your Mendix Cloud app to send data to Dynatrace to provide additional monitoring.

For Dynatrace monitoring, Dynatrace OneAgent is used to collect metrics.

In addition to auto-instrumented built-in metrics collected by OneAgent, Mendix apps can also collect custom application metrics. Custom application metrics are supported in Mendix 9.7 and above. For more information on the custom metrics you can send to Dynatrace, see Monitoring Your Mendix Apps with an APM Tool.

Prerequisites

To use Dynatrace and send data to Dynatrace from your Mendix app, you need the following:

Access to a Dynatrace SaaS or Dynatrace Managed environment
The following information about Dynatrace:
- The Dynatrace environment URL
- The Dynatrace environment ID
- An access token for integrating your Dynatrace environment with your Mendix app; for details on how to obtain this, see Dynatrace’s Generate an Access Token documentation
A licensed Mendix app of which you are the Technical Contact

Connect Node to Dynatrace

To start sending your Mendix app’s metrics to Dynatrace, you need to set some environment variables in the Mendix Portal. Follow these steps:

From Apps, go to the Environments page of your app.
Click Details on the environment you wish to monitor with Dynatrace.
Switch to the Runtime tab.

Add the following Custom Environment Variables.

Variable	Required?	Description	Details
`DT_SAAS_URL`	Yes	The URL of Dynatrace environment	The format when using the Dynatrace SaaS environment is similar to `https://<your-environment-id>.live.dynatrace.com`. If you are using a Dynatrace managed environment, just provide the full URL of the Dynatrace domain, like `https://<your-dynatrace-domain>`.
`DT_TENANT`	Yes	The Dynatrace Environment ID	For more information, see the Environment ID Dynatrace documentation.
`DT_PAAS_TOKEN`	Yes	The access token for integrating your Mendix app with Dynatrace	Create this on the Dynatrace environment. For more information, see Generate an Access Token. The token must include the `PaaS integration - Installer download` and `Ingest metrics` scopes.
`DT_IS_MANAGED`	No	Set this to `true` if you are using Dynatrace Managed. The default is assumed to be Dynatrace SaaS and set to `false`.	This variable is only needed for custom application metrics ingestion.
`DT_CLUSTER_ID`	No	You can use this to tag your cluster, process group, or deployment group.
`DT_CUSTOM_PROP`	No	This can be used to provide metadata for your process group.	For more information, see Define Your Own Process Group Metadata.

Return to the General tab and restart your environment.

Additional Information

Dimensions (Only Valid for Custom Metrics)

If you use Dynatrace to monitor more than one app and environment, you need some dimensions to be able to tell which app or environment these metrics apply to. To identify the metrics for your app and environment in Dynatrace, Mendix provides some default dimensions. You can also add extra dimensions.

What Dynatrace calls “dimensions,” other monitoring tools call “tags.” The Mendix Portal therefore refers to a “tag” when it is setting up a Dynatrace “dimension.”

Default Dimensions

For metrics that are pushed to Dynatrace, Mendix attaches these default dimensions:

app – The environment ID of your Mendix environment
instance_index – Instance index that the metrics belong to

Extra Dimensions

You can set extra dimensions as tags in the Mendix Portal. Mendix recommends at least setting an env:{environment_name} tag (for example, env:accp). This tag enables you to identify metrics sent from a particular environment so you can separate out production metrics from test metrics.

To set this tag, do the following:

From Apps, go to the Environments page of your app.
Click Details () on an environment you are monitoring with Dynatrace.
Switch to the Tags tab.
Click Add and type in a string to be sent to Dynatrace as a dimension. For more information, see the Tags tab documentation in Environment Details.
Restart the app.

Setting this value for your app causes all metrics from this environment of your app to have these tags. For example, the tags for mx.microflow.time.avg for this set of metrics include env:accp.

Dynatrace Issues

If you have any issues related to accessing Dynatrace, contact their support at Dynatrace Support. You need a Dynatrace account to request their support.

Metrics