Dynatrace Platform Subscription (Contracts)

Our main use case for Dynatrace  is that we deployed Dynatrace  OneAgent across our AKS nodes to monitor pod level metrics and service dependencies. Smartscape topology helped us visualize the entire environment in real-time and identify issues such as memory leaks and high response times during load. For our backend services, we were facing intermittent latency issues, but using Dynatrace we could pinpoint the exact methods and queries causing the application slowness and understand what exactly was happening.

Dynatrace offers several best features. When comparing before integrating and using Dynatrace, we also used other tools including Prometheus and Grafana , but Dynatrace provides that additional feature. Nowadays, everything incorporates AI, and Davis AI that Dynatrace built-in dashboards are clean and powerful. The AI integration allows us to outperform the issues, reduce the downtime, and timely resolve the issues. Their AI integration is exceptional and gives Dynatrace a better capability compared to competitors.

Davis AI and the built-in dashboards have made a difference for our team because whenever we were stuck on any level issue or metrics and wanted to dig into some logs and metrics to identify where exactly it was going wrong on our application side, the AI helped us to narrow down where exactly it was going wrong. It identifies the particular specific pod, application, or container and provides a whole overview of the application and container level. We had to fine-tune it to align with our environment. We fine-tuned it in such a way that whenever something goes down on our containerization or VM level, we could drill down and by using the AI analysis, it looks into the entire system and provides an exact pinpoint solution when we give a detailed outline. This reduced the resolution problem to a lesser time compared to using other tools.

Dynatrace has positively impacted our organization. We have had major outages across the organization, whether application side or performance level related, with users experiencing slowness or blank pages. However, Dynatrace setup on an enterprise level brought down the outage time by half. All cross-functional teams can integrate and see exactly what is going on, allowing us to work on the actual resolution based on the metrics provided by Dynatrace. Using this tool, it pinpointed the problem instead of us scratching our heads trying to identify where it could go wrong, and we could directly proceed with the solution. This reduced our man-hours and outage time while increasing productivity based on performance metrics and observability.

We encountered some challenges while using Dynatrace. Although the initial setup was smooth, fine-tuning alert thresholds and custom metrics took some time. Another challenge was that Dynatrace charges based on host units, so we had to carefully plan our agent deployments. The licensing model is expensive. Additionally, the complexity of setup is an issue. While OneAgent and auto-discover services are powerful, the setup is more complex compared to other tools such as Prometheus and Grafana . These integrations are simple and basic, but Dynatrace setup requires more complexity based on the environment. For new users wanting to use Dynatrace, it is difficult. However, the AI-related solutions and metrics took us to the next level for identifying and fixing things.

Dynatrace requires an agent for operation. OneAgent is powerful, but it is also resource-heavy. On lightweight nodes or older systems, the agent can slightly impact performance. If Dynatrace could implement a lightweight agent behavior, we could make things faster. Additionally, if Dynatrace could add a long-term retention policy so that we could store more data and find fine-grained details, that would help us. While Dynatrace managed edition supports on-premises deployment, the SaaS version depends on cloud connectivity. For highly regulated or air-gapped environments, setup and updates can be challenging. Although the initial setup is smooth, if someone wants to fine-tune it and fully understand the tool end-to-end, it could be tricky.

Dynatrace is stable.

Dynatrace scalability is great. It is a powerful tool and helped us to reduce customer downtime and increase work efficiency. We could identify any issues causing problems in our application or environment.

Customer support is very prompt. Whenever we faced any issues, we could get timely resolution from their support, so we did not face any issues.

Positive

Before Dynatrace, we used open source Prometheus. It is a very standard solution but not exceptional. It is a standard option because it is open source and free.

My experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing is that Dynatrace licensing model is based on host units and can be complex initially to understand. If setting up in a large scale environment, it is overwhelming because it is expensive. We had to plan carefully when deploying OneAgents across our nodes or clusters, ensuring we did not exceed our licensing capacity.

For purchasing Dynatrace, we explored the AWS Marketplace , but on an enterprise level, we reached out to their agents and they set up a call for integration. We deployed on an enterprise level because while the marketplace is fine, if implementing a solution at a huge enterprise level, we had to work with the actual Dynatrace team to set it up. For some of the bare metal hosts or engines, we went with the marketplace only.

When it comes to metrics and performance, we have clear return on investment. Before Dynatrace, we spent considerable time manually correlating logs, metrics, and traces from multiple tools to find root causes. Using Dynatrace directly improved application uptime and reduced customer impacting incidents. It helped our engineers focus on optimizing rather than firefighting.

My experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing is that Dynatrace licensing model is based on host units and can be complex initially to understand. If setting up in a large scale environment, it is overwhelming because it is expensive. We had to plan carefully when deploying OneAgents across our nodes or clusters, ensuring we did not exceed our licensing capacity.

Before choosing Dynatrace, we considered DataDog and other tools available in the market, but compared to all other tools and their values that could bring to our organization, we chose Dynatrace.

My advice for others looking into using Dynatrace depends on the organization. My main advice is that if you want an enterprise-level observability and monitoring solution for a hassle-free experience with troubleshooting, identifying and reducing customer downtime, and increasing work efficiency, or if you want a stable and standard solution, Dynatrace is the best fit. This review received a rating of nine out of ten.

Public Cloud

Amazon Web Services  (AWS )

What do you like best about the product?

It has the great ability to provide deep, real time insights into the performance of applications and infrastructure. It's an amazing and powerful tool for monitoring complex environment. It has the real the real time monitoring, automatic discovery of dependencies and clear visualisation of problems that saves a lot of time while troubleshooting.

What do you dislike about the product?

Nothing for now, everything is working perfectly.

What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?

It helps to solve the problems related to visibility cross complex, and modern systems. In large environment with lots of microservices, cloud platforms, and integrations, it is highly chances that issues can get easily slipped through. Dynatrace helps in automatically discovers and monitoring everything end to end, so you have the ability to see exactly where problems start and how they impact users.

What do you like best about the product?

The level of details Dynatrace provides is too good. You can dig in down and down and get to the root of the issue.
Pretty easy to implement.
Their customer support is also top notch. While on a dashboard or any page you can connect with support and then work with them to understand the feature or more.
Integration with other tools is also pretty straight.

What do you dislike about the product?

Quite tough to learn and understand how to use the tool. Basically learning curve is high.
Pretty expensive. If not configured correctly, you will bleed money.
Just due to learning curve, we found frequency of users using app going down

What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?

Dynatrace helps us address several critical challenges in our infrastructure, Kubernetes, and application environments
1. End-to-End Observability Across Hybrid Environments - Dynatrace provides a unified observability platform across servers, containers, applications, and network dependencies. We can trace a single user transaction end-to-end, from front-end to database
2.Kubernetes and Microservices Visibility - Dynatrace automatically maps and monitors Kubernetes workloads, namespaces, and services, showing real-time health and performance metrics
3. Improved Application Performance and User Experience - With Real User Monitoring (RUM) and synthetic tests, we monitor real-world user interactions and simulate business-critical transactions.

What do you like best about the product?

The implementation process is simple, and the user interface is highly intuitive, which makes it easy to use even for newcomers to the platform. The product keeps up with market trends by consistently adding new features and offering frequent updates. Customer support is very responsive when it comes to addressing critical issues. Additionally, it integrates well with various third-party platforms, including ServiceNow, PagerDuty, and Microsoft Teams for alert notifications.

What do you dislike about the product?

So far, in my work experience, I haven't encountered anything noteworthy.

What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?

The AI analysis of Davis is very good and almost accurate to find the root cause entities which helps to reduce the MTTR for the incident for most of the cases, also the Dashboards are now user interactive with new features like Notebook and Davis AI forecasting.

What do you like best about the product?

Dynatrace’s Davis AI engine automatically pinpoints the root cause of issues, which saves huge time compared to manual troubleshooting.
Dynatrace continuously monitors without gaps, so performance bottlenecks and anomalies are detected instantly.

What do you dislike about the product?

Licensing can get expensive and sometimes confusing when scaling across multiple environments.
Some advanced customization and integrations require extra effort or external tools.

What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?

To trace application requests end-to-end and quickly identify bottlenecks.
For centralized log monitoring, correlation with issues, and root cause analysis.