Dynatrace hardware configuration
Hello,
I have a question about the hardware specs for Compuware APM,
If the information Is present on the website, I apologize, I aim a new user and I could not directly find it.
This are the specs we obtained by a Compuware consultant about hardware needs,
Question
My boss was a little bit stressed out about the data retention (1,68TByte / day),
I think he is seeing this as database space (expensive),
I remember ChrisG. says that Compuware saves some data on the disk and other data into the database,
Is this correct? What data is saved into the database? And what data on disk?
I made a simple hardware config (in attach), my boss likes schemas 
, is this correct?
1.1 dynaTrace Server
, the following hardware is required:
- 64-bit Windows Server,8+ CPU Cores,16+ GB RAM
This will hold :
- dynaTrace server (6GB Heap),1 or 2 dynaTrace Collectors (2GB Heap),dynaTrace Analysis Server (4GB Heap)
1.2 Data Retention
If the customer wants to store all the sessions at sustained peak levels of 50000 transactions per minute, then about 1,65TB storage per day of retention will be required. For three weeks this amounts to 35 TB of storage requirements.
It is possible the the customer will use a ramp-up period, and start the implementation with a lower number of transactions, and for shorter periods of time.
1.3 dynaTrace Collector
To reduce firewall overhead and delays during agent startup; a collector machine is recommended. If the customer chooses not to install this separate server, then certainly 2 collector processes will need to be installed on the dynaTrace server to handle the load of all 35 agents.
- 64-bit Windows Server,2+ CPU Cores,4+ GB RAM
This will hold :
- dynaTrace Collector (2GB Heap)
1.4 Database server
The database engine will be installed on a separate machine, and is best sized by DBAs. The Performance Warehouse Database size can grow to 16GB of data.
Best Answer
Hi Steven
I actually used your schema in yesterdays Community Webinar to explain what type of storage we use. There is basically two types of data we store
a) PurePaths -> all these transactions that we capture end - to - end
b) Time Series Data -> these are all the measures such as Response Time, CPU, Memory, ... -> the stuff you put on a dashboard or that you use for alerting.
PurePaths are stored on the file system. This is what you configure in Server Settings -> Storage. We called it "Continuous Session" because we continously store new incoming PurePaths on disk until we fill up the quota. If the quota is full we remove old PurePaths. Depending on your PurePath volume (how many you have per hour, day, ...) it can mean that 1TB of storage gives you 1 day of PurePaths or 1 week. The more storage the longer back in time you can look AT EVERY PurePath that has been recorded
Time Series Data is stored in a database. WE also call it Performance Warehouse configured through Server Settings -> Performance Warehouse. We store Time Series data with a 1 min aggregation but then also "age" data, e.g: after 2 weeks we aggregate it to 1 hour, ... -> this can also be configured in that configuration dialog.
I hope this makes sense.
It would also help to have a short discussion for those users who also deploy SILK PERFORMER why one gets the informational error to turn off "continuous session" recording when using a load test - too much data being captured with multiple VU's??
The reason why this is recommended is because SilkPerformer has a feature to "Start REcording" a new session. That means - when you start a SilkPerformner Load Test Silk will tell dynaTrace to start a new session recording (this will only work if Cont Session is turned off). Then it runs the Load Tests and all these PurePaths end up in that stored session. At the end Silk is stopping session recording again. The result is that you have a recorded session for each Load Test.
BUT - you can also use Cont. Session Recording. No problem with that at all. The PurePaths will still be there in the Continuous Session and you can - if you want to keep these results per load test always do a "Store Session" for a certain timeframe.
