1. Definitions to know #
Dynatrace vocabulary.
Glossary #
| Term | Definition |
|---|---|
| Environment (tenant) | Isolated space that receives and stores the data of a scope (for example production) |
| Entity | Any detected object: host, process, process group, service, application, container... |
| OneAgent | Single agent installed on the host: it automatically discovers and instruments processes and services |
| ActiveGate | Relay and gateway: routing agent traffic, cloud and Kubernetes monitoring, extensions, private synthetics |
| Smartscape | Map of dependencies between all entities, built in real time |
| PurePath | End-to-end distributed trace of a request, with code-level detail |
| Davis | AI engine that detects anomalies, groups events and identifies the root cause |
| Grail | Data lakehouse that stores logs, metrics, traces and events, queryable in DQL |
2. The architecture #
Agents, gateways, cluster.
Diagram #
- The OneAgent is installed once per host: it detects technologies (Java, .NET, Node.js, PHP, Go, web servers, databases) and injects instrumentation without code changes.
- The ActiveGate concentrates network flows (useful behind a firewall), queries cloud and Kubernetes APIs and runs extensions.
- The cluster stores and analyzes: hosted by Dynatrace (SaaS) or on your premises (Managed).
- Data can also arrive through OpenTelemetry, Prometheus, the API or extensions.
Good to know: The current platform (Grail, apps, AppEngine) coexists with the « classic » interface. Both approaches are covered in the course.
3. Davis, the artificial intelligence #
From thousands of events to one problem.
Principle #
Davis automatically learns the normal behavior of each entity (baseline) and detects deviations: rising error rate, slowdowns, saturation. Thanks to Smartscape, it links anomalies together and presents a single problem with its root cause and its impact on users.
| AI | Role |
|---|---|
| Causal AI | Topology analysis to trace back to the root cause |
| Predictive AI | Forecasts (disk saturation, capacity) |
| Generative AI (Davis CoPilot) | Help writing DQL queries and with analysis |
Good practice: Davis is all the more relevant when the topology is complete: install OneAgent in Full-Stack mode on all hosts of an application rather than on just a few.
