Turning off Dynatrace Monitoring vs. full uninstall of the Application
Hey,
Currently at my customer site they have the strategy that when something goes wrong and it is suspected that Dynatrace is the culprit(not always the case), the customer will rollback the Dynatrace application and agents from their entire application. This is a very lengthy process so I have suggested that rather we have the ability to turn off server side monitoring(The slider within the UEM tab). This has sparked interest and I am trying to investigate this issue to more depth so that this new strategy will become the norm. I have filled out this table at this point.
Step |
Action |
Result |
Requires |
Turnaround time |
Risk |
1 |
Turn off reporting |
removes overhead |
Turn off Agent reporting in Dynatrace |
One option per System Profile |
??? |
2 |
Remove code |
Remove application code |
Reboot |
Request for change(lengthy process) |
Mitigation |
I was wondering if there were any specific cases where removing the Dynatrace application would be necessary and/or if there was any risk to just turning off reporting within the application.
Cheers,
-Sanj
Best Answer
Hi Sanj
First of all I hope you investigate why they run into problems. If it is really related to dynaTrace then I suggest to open a support ticket. As you know - the full potential of APM comes when you have it on 24/7.
As to your two options. If you move the slider you basically tell the Agents to stop sending data. This could "solve" your problem if your problems you have are caused by the code that we execute when our agents collect data. As we dont know that it is still risky -> therefore: lets find out what is actually causing these app problems.
In general there is no risk involved in turning off capturing for a particular application. It will basically tell the entry point sensor pack (Web Server, Servlet, ASP.NET, User Experience) to not start a PurePath for these particular URLs. And - if we do not start a PurePath all agents that see code executions along that PurePath will also not capture data as these agents dont know that these methods executed are part of a PurePath. So - risk is limited
My main point though is: lets figure out what breaks the app
Andi
Hey Andi,
I apologize as I failed to mention that for every case in which Dynatrace is a suspect, we always have full contact with support so that we can diligently have the APM solution readily available for all the applications.
Thank you for your response. This was my same line of thinking but I was hoping for an expert opinion to reaffirm my knowledge which I certainly obtained!
Cheers.
