Primary use case is EMI, which is application monitoring. Our enterprise management infrastructure is supported by Dynatrace.
Principal Architect at a computer software company with 11-50 employees
It can monitor our entire infrastructure on AWS
Pros and Cons
- "The view it provides for default analysis is very nice. The way in which it showcases how the metrics have been captured and how lucidly that they are displayed. This is a good thing to have from a technical and non-technical perspective."
- "For the manage services, they work on CloudWatch logs and are given CloudWatch logs only. I would like more collaboration with AWS and insight into CloudWatch services. This would be valuable, especially when detecting the fault of the root cause analysis. It would make the process go faster."
What is our primary use case?
How has it helped my organization?
Dynatrace has been catering to AWS, and we moved into AWS. This resulted in us being pleased with the product.
Dynatrace has solved our problems.
What is most valuable?
The view it provides for default analysis is very nice. The way in which it showcases how the metrics have been captured and how lucidly that they are displayed. This is a good thing to have from a technical and non-technical perspective.
What needs improvement?
For the manage services, they work on CloudWatch logs and are given CloudWatch logs only. I would like more collaboration with AWS and insight into CloudWatch services. This would be valuable, especially when detecting the fault of the root cause analysis. It would make the process go faster. Essentially, more integrated services with AWS would be of help.
Buyer's Guide
Dynatrace
November 2024
Learn what your peers think about Dynatrace. Get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions. Updated: November 2024.
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For how long have I used the solution?
Three to five years.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
It is stable. We have not lost data.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
It has quite a sleek architecture with respect to the number of instances that can become an agent.
As for its environment, Dynatrace is ready to scale. Our environment is huge. We have EMR clusters ranging from 100 to 200.
How are customer service and support?
We regularly connect with the technical support and obtain input from them. They are nice to work with, so we have been happy with the service.
What about the implementation team?
We worked with architects for the best way to configure our Dynatrace in AWS. We selected the managed architecture, and there are less configurations and costs of adoption with Dynatrace.
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
While it is quite good in respect to its functionality, there are few area in regards to pricing that they can look at how to possibly change. I have heard it's costly.
Which other solutions did I evaluate?
We did evaluate other vendors, like Datadog, who were also good. However, Dynatrace was implemented earlier, and we continued to use it because it was satisfying all our requirements.
Our requirements include:
- Overall monitoring.
- Managed services of AWS.
- Monitoring AWS Lambda.
- Monitoring Amazon EMR clusters.
- Getting an understanding about the different set of services that we are on. We have a managed architecture supported by Dynatrace, so we could adopt them very fast.
What other advice do I have?
Dynatrace is pretty good as they are the market leaders.
We started with the on-premise version. Now, we are moving onto the AWS version. From the perspective of analyzing Dynatrace, it was able to do the EMI for all our data services. It has worked out well. We have been happy with it.
It can monitor your entire infrastructure on AWS. I don't see an option why you should not use this product. If you don't have AWS as a requirement, then maybe re-evaluate. Otherwise, I am confident in the product.
Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
Works at a financial services firm with 10,001+ employees
Helped us reduce outage times and severity of impact
Pros and Cons
- "Dynatrace has helped us reduce outage times and severity of impact."
- "Quick availability of multiple aspects of performance from infrastructure to application layers."
- "So far, we have not achieved the benefit of preventing issues."
- "Experience with relationship/account manager has been really poor, it does not seem to be the firm's priority to support their customers."
- "Need better mapping to true business service rather than purely technical monitoring."
What is our primary use case?
Application monitoring to quickly troubleshoot production issues and determine the root cause, as well as non-functional performance testing in QA.
How has it helped my organization?
Dynatrace has helped us reduce outage times and severity of impact.
So far, we have not achieved the benefit of preventing issues.
What is most valuable?
Quick availability of multiple aspects of performance from infrastructure to application layers.
What needs improvement?
- Wider coverage of platforms supported.
- Better mapping to true business service rather than purely technical monitoring.
For how long have I used the solution?
One to three years.
How is customer service and technical support?
Experience with relationship/account manager has been really poor, it does not seem to be the firm's priority to support their customers.
Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
Buyer's Guide
Dynatrace
November 2024
Learn what your peers think about Dynatrace. Get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions. Updated: November 2024.
816,406 professionals have used our research since 2012.
QA Performance Lead at a manufacturing company with 10,001+ employees
PurePath helps you pinpoint issues, then develop and focus them in the right way
Pros and Cons
- "Having the metrics easily understood and easily articulating the information."
- "The ability to use PurePath in analytics is definitely the most valuable feature. It helps you pinpoint issues, then develop and focus them in the right way."
- "We are able to fix issues rather quickly, by identifying then fixing them. Therefore, the efficiency of the organization has improved. We are spending less time fixing issues."
- "The AppMon 6.5 is problematic in configuring. It is little finicky. When we configured the JVM, it did not work."
What is our primary use case?
We are actually using it in the test environment, not in production. That is our use case. What we want to do is we want to test it and find issues either with our core or infrastructure before it goes live.
How has it helped my organization?
We are able to fix issues rather quickly, by identifying then fixing them. Therefore, the efficiency of the organization has improved. We are spending less time fixing issues.
Business case: We had a problem with the previous solution where we were spending more time on it. That meant increased costs. Now, we are spending less time, so costs have decreased. That is how you improve the efficiency of the organization.
What is most valuable?
The ability to use PurePath in analytics is definitely the most valuable feature. It helps you pinpoint issues, then develop and focus them in the right way. It helps to fix them rather quickly.
What needs improvement?
I am more interested in the end-to-end performance system, not only the server site from the client's side.
For example:
- How much time is spent on the client when the user is interacting with the mobile application or even web application?
- How much time each click took?
- How much time the page object domain took to load up?
- Even if it is a mobile app, when you interact with the app, how much time the control took to respond to it?
Right now, we use the Dynatrace library to build. Then, we would like to generate the overall transaction and the performance it has when the request is coming from different networks across different regions, different periods, and different parts of the world, like the synthetic monitoring solution. So, there are desperate systems.
What we would like to see is to make it easy, more automated with an easier way of doing these things. OneAgent is an easier approach which you just install it automatically into the installed application and it sends you the information. For the mobile clients, we want to get the end-to-end thing that makes it easier to set up, that will be cool.
For how long have I used the solution?
Still implementing.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
With stability, we have seen some issues. Then, we fixed them. So, it is stable now.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
The scalability is another objective. We are trying to test the scalability of Dynatrace. We have seen some scalability issues because of the non-optimal users of the resources and the infrastructure, so we made it more scalable. So, it is acceptably scalable.
The role of AI when it comes to IT's ability to scale in the cloud and manage performance is very important. The AI definitely works.
How are customer service and technical support?
Technical support is pretty good. Not only the technical support, but the upper managers, they are also very technically, savvy people. Most of them, not all of them are. Also, some of the sales accounts, they are able to find you the right technical people, if necessary.
Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?
In my organization, I am dealing with more than 20 applications. I have to scale with limited resources, so I needed a sophisticated tool to tell me where the problem is. Traditionally, I would be telling you that you have a problem. Now, I am able to tell you that you have a problem right now and what it is. That has made a big difference. I was looking for tool to do this, then I found Dynatrace.
How was the initial setup?
The AppMon 6.5 is problematic in configuring. It is little finicky. When we configured the JVM, it did not work.
Sometimes, people are making mistakes, typos, or even if you just sit down you need to be in the light, either in the beginning or in the end. So, this is always a little problematic for us. The issue is not super small, but it is okay.
What was our ROI?
We are buying more licenses, because we are seeing more value.
What other advice do I have?
I would advise a colleague or friend to use Dynatrace.
The most important criteria when selecting a vendor:
- PurePath
- Ease of use
- The dashboard
- Having the metrics easily understood and easily articulating the information.
Disclosure: PeerSpot contacted the reviewer to collect the review and to validate authenticity. The reviewer was referred by the vendor, but the review is not subject to editing or approval by the vendor.
Operations Level 1 at a manufacturing company with 1,001-5,000 employees
Drill-down to code level helps developers see exactly what happens, fix issues
Pros and Cons
- "I like the drill-down feature, that it can drill down to the code level to point to where the problems are. It's also helpful for the developers to identify what exactly happens, rather than the operation team having to do so. It works well for the developers to fix issues."
What is our primary use case?
We wanted to buy a tool which would take care of monitoring our application performance. That's the primary reason we went for this product.
We've been using it for the past two months and so far we've been very good with using the tool. It's been very helpful for us.
How has it helped my organization?
We have moved up to the next level, and once we move on to the cloud I think it's going to be more complex to monitor. That's where Dynatrace is going to help us, with identifying problems.
The benefit is that it keeps track of the application. The better the application is going to perform, the better the users are going to do their jobs. When we work with the customers it's going to be really helpful.
Overall it's helped our business in time savings. When everything happens on time you move on to the next job or activity, where you focus on things you really need to focus on.
What is most valuable?
I like the drill-down feature, that it can drill down to the code level to point to where the problems are. It's also helpful for the developers to identify what exactly happens, rather than the operation team having to do so. It works well for the developers to fix issues, so that way it's very good.
What needs improvement?
There are certain features which were introduced today here at the Perform 2018 conference, like the playback. I was very much impressed with that. It's going to help us a lot. That was something I was looking for and that's what they did. The new features that were launched today were the ones that we were expecting, and we're quite happy with that.
I can't think of any limitations at the moment. It's too early for me to comment, it's only been two months.
For how long have I used the solution?
Less than one year.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
It's too early to comment on stability. It's been only two months so I'll have to wait on this.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
I think scaling is going to be pretty easy. We're not up to that, so once we are in a position to think about the scalability we will take a look at it.
How are customer service and technical support?
The technical support team is really good. We do have guardian services, the dedicated resource who works with us. We always reach out to him. The online chats have been effective. The webpages, the university where we can go and have a look at solutions and the like, have been very helpful so far. The technical team has been very good with support.
Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?
We have not used any tools before this one, not siloed or otherwise.
We went to a consultant to tell us which is the best product on the market. We read some reviews and we came up with Dynatrace, that it would be the apt product, based on feedback and information from the other resources. That's why we zeroed in on Dynatrace.
How was the initial setup?
I was not involved from the first phase. I got involved only in the middle of the project, so I really can't comment on this. But from when I got involved, I think it has been pretty good. I would have to ask colleagues who did the other parts to check how they were.
Which other solutions did I evaluate?
AppDynamics. I think it's easier to work with Dynatrace, right from the installation, and I thought Dynatrace was better than AppDynamics working with SAP.
What other advice do I have?
When it comes to the nature of digital complexity I think the role of AI, when it comes to IT's ability to stay natural and manage performance, is very important. The AI of Dynatrace is really excellent. It would be very difficult without Dynatrace AI, so I think it's very important.
I would definitely say go with Dynatrace. I also like Dynatrace because of their integration with other products like ServiceNow. It's very good. And again, working with SAP HANA it's very good so. So, overall I recommend Dynatrace.
Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
APM Architect at a tech services company with 10,001+ employees
You save time fixing issues because deployment is easy
Pros and Cons
- "The user interface is like a type of dashboard. You can use the tool as an end user into the tool interface, which is good."
- "The deployment configuration and everything is simple. It is not that complicated."
- "We have configured the alerting so the error or the incident will go to the respective team. Then, the team can contact the user once they see that they have an issue and ask if they can them resolve the issue."
- "There is a limitation on timeframe. Now, if you look at the dashboard, it will state five minutes, then 15 minutes, then one hour, then six hours, and finally 24 hours. I would like them to provide a set of options defining the business hour."
What is our primary use case?
Considering the application and what we are using at the client site. We have a user interaction related application where users fill in their information, and they are processing the formality and completing the business transaction. The business transaction generates a policy or a report out of all the services. This is from the user interface point of things.
Other than that, they are that second aspect of us in elite services called back-end services. There is no actual user interface with these services for the end user. There are some other applications, which will be calling the services. At the client side, we are monitoring Layer 2. One service that we use it for: What are the issues, what are the problems, and what are we facing for services.
Similarly, when the user interaction is there, what are the challenges users are facing and how we can proactively use Dynatrace and get the problem resolved. That is what the current setup of Dynatrace offers our client base.
How has it helped my organization?
- The deployment configuration and everything is simple. It is not that complicated. That is critical, because that saves time. Whenever something goes wrong, since in deployment everything is easy, you are saving time solving the issues.
- The user interface. The user interface is like a type of dashboard. You can use the tool as an end user into the tool interface, which is good. This is simple, not complex as where to find something. Any layman, if you give them the tool, who has knowledge of how to use an internet browser will be able to use the tool if you just explain it in a few words. It is intuitive.
What is most valuable?
Mainly, if the user rarely utilizes user monitoring, this is the biggest feature. Because when the user has an issue, we have configured the alerting so the error or the incident will go to the respective team. Then, the team can contact the user once they see that they have an issue and ask if they can them resolve the issue. That is the key thing, because that helps with revenue loss. This is the key feature that we see.
What needs improvement?
There is a limitation on timeframe. Now, if you look at the dashboard, it will state five minutes, then 15 minutes, then one hour, then six hours, and finally 24 hours. I would like them to provide a set of options defining the business hour.
In the morning from 5AM to 6AM is my business hour. If you could give me that option, it would be easier for me instead of just lasting one business hour to finish. This would be a cool feature.
A lot of organizations are 24/7, but they will be mainly looking for limited data for their business hours. My business hours are about 12 hours, which is when all my analysis is done.
For how long have I used the solution?
One to three years.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
We had only two or three major downtimes. We were able to resolve those in less than eight hours. These were not big, major downtimes that we experienced for the solution.
How are customer service and technical support?
We have used technical support many times, because there are some issues which we were not able to figure out based on the information provided. There are some things, which we need the technical support team's help in making the changes, and also before changes are made. There should not be a case where we make a change and certain features get disabled, or certain featured get enabled.
We have used technical support in the past, but the support is limited. Though, I have never had an issue that the technical team has not been able to solve. I show them the problem, then they see the problem, and solve it. That is what is very successful for me: no back-and-forth with support.
Support can ask in a list what information they want from me and what problem I am facing, then I will explain it. This will help us to solve problem more quickly than just chatting.
Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?
Before, I came to that account, they had a network monitoring tool. They also had some JV monitoring tools, so two different things. There are some network-related issue you can take from the network monitoring tool, some with a JVM and some you need to take from Java.
For the end user, application, or web tier, the monitoring was not there.
I have used, as a part of my team back home in India, CA Wiley. We did a PoC implementation with it. I did a PoC of Wily in 2005.
How was the initial setup?
The deployment was simple, as well as the upgrade.
The first upgrade was little bit complex because you have a data you need to maintain. With an initial deployment, you are starting from scratch and have nothing to worry about. When you upgrade, you need to plan well in advance what you want see.
We needed to do see what was intact, because when we moved from 6.1 to 6.3, the migration tool that they had, it was not quite solid or sound. Now, they have a good migration tool whatever they developed.
The challenges that we face were not that big just minor challenges, since we did a PoC with the tool. Therefore, we could migrate easily with minimal impact on the end user.
Which other solutions did I evaluate?
When I came in the picture for this particular engagement, the client had already done a PoC with Dynatrace. However, if I say Dynatrace right now, it is a total different flavor, as I am currently using AppMon.
When I came here and I was working another engagement, I attended some training for DC RUM which was a Compuware APM to Dynatrace. Now, it has totally changed since when I started using it for deployment. Everything is fine. As compared to the Wiley, it is not an apple to apple comparison.
What other advice do I have?
Make sure your application team or the development team is going to use the tool. If your application or development team is not going to get any benefit in the sense of not being involved in this particular APM monitoring, then the benefit will be less. For example, if you implemented a solution and your monitoring team is using it, then to achieve the full-fledge benefit, your application development team should use it, because during the development itself they will see that these are the challenges we are facing. They will fix the problems during the development instead of in testing.
This will save time for any application for release, because the development team will fix the problems before the release of anything. This is the foremost thing that they need to consider whenever they are going for the solution.
The other thing is an organizational point of view. You need to have some center of excellence, which will be dedicated for the APM. It is not okay for some part-time people to just be looking on. There has to be a dedicated team if you have this tool in your organization.
Only then you will get whatever you are expecting out of this tool.
AI's playing the key role in the way all the monitoring solutions are going now. They are computing all this information which is available and providing information it for human beings to try to solve problems.
The AI is playing a key role otherwise just imagine. Previously, you would need to analyze all the logs for an error and coming out with the solution would take hours. Nowadays, because of the AI, the log analysis and everything has been done in backing. You can use your experience logic, take that information, and solve the problem.
If I had just one solution that could provide real answers, not just data, the immediate benefit would be time to resolve issues that would be useful for the team. To solve the problem for the end user, because from his point of view, the problem should be resolved quickly. So, this is definitely an advantage for the end user as it is for the team.
Support team could use the information and will be able to pinpoint the issue, who the user is, and where their location is. When we have these issues with this technology, the issues will be resolved more quickly because you have the information regarding what went wrong, what is the error, and what stage the problem is at.
Most important criteria when selecting a vendor: What is their market share? Where are they standing? Are they a leader or they just initially starting? Because based on the customer's budget, if they want to sell out or work with a type of market leader's solution, then we will definitely look at that particular area.
However, there are some company that might not want to sell out. We see this in some companies, which are in their startup faze. The investment will be minimal, but the challenge is that you won't be able to get the features that other companies at the top are offering.
Disclosure: My company has a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer: Partner.
Enterprise Monitoring Architect
Service workflow and dashboards help increase our productivity, make our troubleshooting efforts more efficient
Pros and Cons
- "For me the service workflow and the dashboards are the most valuable features, simply because I can know what’s going on in my infrastructure within five minutes, versus two hours."
- "In terms of AI, I love the base-lining Dynatrace provides us. It baselines the application over a seven-day period; we have it at the default of seven days. The artificial intelligence is so amazing because it can automatically track each transaction and their response times: how much CPU they use, how much memory, resources that they use. If there’s any deviation from that Dynatrace will tell me like right away. If there’s a deployment and the deployment has increased response time or is taking up CPU or has caused a memory leak, I can say, “Hey guys, you need to look at this, it’s this function on this page in this microservice, in this docker container. You need to go here, you need to fix it, it’s not going live.” It has just increased our productivity off the charts."
- "We’re monitoring our SQL databases, we’re monitoring our microservices infrastructure, we’re monitoring our front-end we’re monitoring our mobile apps. It has increased our productivity, we’ve been able to optimize all of our applications."
- "I did like the old dashboards, the legacy 6.3 for example; the way we were able to do the dashboarding in the client. I would like to be able to see that in the new version of Dynatrace."
What is our primary use case?
Our primary use case is our mobile applications, to make sure that we’re doing end-to-end transaction tracing for both of our mobile apps.
Its performance is fantastic. We have found so many issues with the code and with development; also, with our microservices on the back-end, that we’ve been able to alleviate and optimize. It’s been totally fantastic.
How has it helped my organization?
It increases productivity first of all, and it makes our troubleshooting efforts more efficient. We don’t do the war-room thing, I hate the war-room thing. A lot of the time, when there’s an issue, before they can even assemble the war room, I’m telling them, "Okay, the problem is here, you need to fix this and then we’re good to go."
What is most valuable?
For me the service workflow and the dashboards are the most valuable features, simply because I can know what’s going on in my infrastructure within five minutes, versus two hours.
What needs improvement?
Can it talk to me?
But seriously, the additional feature I would like to see: I did like the old dashboards, the legacy 6.3 for example; the way we were able to do the dashboarding in the client. I would like to be able to see that in the new version of Dynatrace. Other than that everything else is far superior to what we had before.
For how long have I used the solution?
One to three years.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
I think stability is fantastic. I work very closely with our SE. He and I have developed a very good working relationship. We exchange ideas and he helps me as far as knowing what’s coming up. What’s available, or will be coming up in the future. Then I help him in terms of, this was a custom config that we had to implement, and we feed off of each other.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
The only issue with scalability that we’ve had - and it’s not a Dynatrace issue, it’s more an internal issue - is the fact that the data going over the satellite costs a lot of money. What we’ve ended up having to do is to implement separate data centers on each one of the ships. So instead of having one place that everything goes to, we have 40. That’s the only thing as far as scalability is concerned.
I wanted to be able to have a separate managed node - because we have the on-prem SaaS solution - so have the managed node on each ship disburse that data to the shore without causing the data overhead.
How are customer service and technical support?
Our tech support guy is amazing. What I try to do, because I know how I am and I get irritated when someone comes to me and I know that they haven’t even tried to look. They’re just saying to themselves, “Oh, she knows, let’s ask her.” That’s annoying to me because I have a lot that I have to do throughout the day. What I try to do is, I go to the Dynatrace support site, I’m on there every day watching the videos, looking at the articles, reading the white papers. It’s very extensive. The majority of the time I find what I am looking for. If I don’t, I know that I can call Jeff and say, “Hey, I’m looking for this I can’t find it, can you help me?”
It’s a running joke between him and me because he’s our SE - I don’t want to get him in trouble. Technically, I know I’m supposed to call tech support, but if it’s something real quick that I know he’s going to know, I’ll just say, “Hey Jeff, how do I do this?" Or, "I have been looking on the tech support site and I’m getting annoyed, I can’t find it. I know you know. How can I find this?” Then he'll say, "Oh, just do this, and this, and this." He gives me step by step, and then within 15 minutes, the problem’s been resolved.
In terms of regular tech support, I haven’t had any issues. I have a really good working relationship with them, even the tech support guys, they know me. When I submit tickets, they say, “Oh, hey Danielle.” I’m always reading, learning, asking questions. I tell them, "I know I’m being a pain. I’m going to ask you anyway. How do I do this?" They know it’s me, and they respond right away.
Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?
AppDynamics, and I’ve also worked with New Relic and I’ve also worked with Wily, which was horrible.
I used to work for the government and we used use CA Wily at the Pennsylvania Higher Education Assistance Agency. We used Wily and I hated it, it was awful. Just basic monitoring functionality, we had to write custom code for it.
Then I went to Office Depot and there we switched from AppDynamics to Dynatrace. I was part of that implementation as well. My reaction was, "Oh my God, what is this?" I was totally engaged and at the time I was a WebSphere admin. I wasn’t part of the set-it-up implementation but I was an actual user. Once we got the Dynatrace software on my particular environment I ran with it. I loved it.
From there I came to Royal Caribbean and we were still using New Relic at the time, I was miserable. I talked to my boss, and he had already been looking at and scoping Dynatrace. I just told him, "Look dude, we’ve got to get Dynatrace. Office Depot is using Dynatrace. This is all the stuff that we can do with it." At the point he was sold and we brought it to RCCL. I’ve been using it ever since.
How was the initial setup?
I was involved in the initial setup. The funny is that I worked at Royal in 2014. I implemented the initial - we call it the "legacy" - Dynatrace environment, which is version 6.3. I did that implementation and then I left and went to work at Carnival, hated it there, and then came back to Royal Caribbean and then implemented the new version of Dynatrace.
Setting up the new Dynatrace was different because I was used to the level of complexity. One thing I’ve noticed is that everybody complains about the level of complexity with Dynatrace. Even with the surveys, what I said is, you have to know your infrastructure. That’s one of the things that Dynatrace really forces you to learn and know. They’re a monitoring company. They don’t know how we’ve written our applications, they don’t know how we’ve implemented our microservices, they don’t know what connections we have going into our database. We have to know those things in order to be successful with the set up.
Once you know those things... We’ve automated the entire install practice and we’ve automated the entire implementation process. That’s simply a matter of us or me saying, "Okay, we need architecture diagrams, we need service workflows." I need to know how these calls are being made so that way I can correlate them, and I can write the scripts to do the implementation and then we can get it done.
Which other solutions did I evaluate?
I know they looked at AppDynamics, I know they looked at New Relic. There’s this new company called Datadog that they’ve been looking at. It’s nowhere near the functionality that Dynatrace offers.
What other advice do I have?
In terms of AI, I love the base-lining Dynatrace provides us. It baselines the application over a seven-day period; we have it at the default of seven days. The artificial intelligence is so amazing because it can automatically track each transaction and their response times: how much CPU they use, how much memory, resources that they use. If there’s any deviation from that Dynatrace will tell me like right away. If there’s a deployment and the deployment has increased response time or is taking up CPU or has caused a memory leak, I can say, “Hey guys, you need to look at this, it’s this function on this page in this microservice, in this docker container. You need to go here, you need to fix it, it’s not going live.” It has just increased our productivity off the charts.
We were using siloed monitoring tools before this. The challenge with them is simply the silos themselves. We had separate database monitors, we had separate service monitors. We have a project called Apogee, it’s a routing-type technology. It had its own monitoring. And then we had separate monitoring for the front-end, separate monitoring for the mobile apps. Now, with Dynatrace we have consolidated all that monitoring into one central location.
Regarding one solution that could provide real answers, not just data, we’re already using it now. Like I said, we’re monitoring our SQL databases, we’re monitoring our microservices infrastructure, we’re monitoring our front-end we’re monitoring our mobile apps. It has increased our productivity, we’ve been able to optimize all of our applications. As a matter of fact, I just got a call from our VP because there’s a specific project for the mobile app that we’ve implemented this in. Now, he wants to put it in the rest of the enterprise. Based on what we’ve done for the mobile app project, he wants to roll it out to the entire enterprise.
The most important criterion when selecting a vendor is, are they going to answer my call, because I’m very engaged. If I call you it’s because I have a question. I’m not going to call you unless I absolutely need to, which means that when I call you, you had better either answer the phone or call me back. I am very big on that. Like I said, Jeff has been fantastic, Dave is our sales manager, Chuck Billups is our customer success manager. Between the three of them, if I have an issue, within 15 to 20 minutes I have an answer.
In terms of advice, make sure you know your infrastructure. Make sure you know your applications. So often in the IT industry we see people who say, "Yeah, I’m an architect, I’m a senior engineer. I’m a senior developer." Then, if you ask them, "Okay, what’s the service workflow of this service?" or "What’s the workflow of this application?" or "What’s the workflow from this server to that server?" They can’t tell you. You absolutely have to know those things in order to be able to implement Dynatrace successfully.
Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
Application Performance Engineer at a transportation company with 10,001+ employees
Quick answers for scalability, but the product does not have mature enough dashboards
Pros and Cons
- "They have quick answers for scalability."
- "It does not have mature enough dashboards."
- "It still has a long way to go to reach that single pane of glass."
- "They expect the customer to do the basic analysis, do all the solutions, and find the solutions themselves. If it is really a product problem, only then will they be able to identify and spend time on the customer."
What is our primary use case?
My main use case would be for a business transaction and doing a monitoring solution that my client is looking for.
We feel the Dynatrace Managed, the stage that this product is in right now, is not 100% mature. Its admin is the best compared to the managed. I understand it is under the transformation from AppMon to Dynatrace, but we are still waiting for the better dashboard views to come in to play for the executive views, the business transactions, etc.
How has it helped my organization?
I used to be a monitoring person for IBM, for close to 10 years. I moved to monitoring Dynatrace recently, and I see lot of benefit while monitoring the microservices related to this product.
What is most valuable?
The one thing we have tried the most is the microservice monitoring. All the apps are moving from the native server base to serverless. Some of them are AWS microservices, for example. This product seems best when compared to other vendors.
What needs improvement?
It still has a long way to go to reach that single pane of glass based on the releases that it launched into this training session. It looks like slowly features are coming out every month, and I am expecting more features to be released. However, I would just like to have a solution that cleary works with the current situation, i.e., how we can integrate the products to achieve better results for what we seek.
Also, it does not have mature enough dashboards.
For how long have I used the solution?
Less than one year.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
I am fairly new to this product, but stability is good.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
They have quick answers for scalability. When we wanted to get up from two nodes to three nodes, it worked quite fine. We are happy with that.
How are customer service and technical support?
When something goes wrong, support is unbelievable. I really can't expect that they are so slow in the support, which I really did not like. They expect the customer to do the basic analysis, do all the solutions, and find the solutions themselves. If it is really a product problem, only then will they be able to identify and spend time on the customer.
Several issues in the last month took us the whole day to get our system back online. It is good that we are not 100% live with all our critical applications, so management is not so hard on the Dynatrace team. I can't imagine that will happen again, and I am wondering how do I improve the support? Long story short, the support is not good.
Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?
Siloed monitoring tools were for old style of application deployments. They were good for that aspect, but not anymore.
CA Wiley and similar products are good for a JVM in-house infrastructure. Now that technology has changed in the last two years, so they are not the ideal solutions anymore.
How was the initial setup?
We are partially enrolled, but I have not done it 100%. Next week, I am setting up a lab environment in my organization. Then, I will be doing it completely.
Coming up from the OneAgent side deployment, it is basically a daily job and a 100% improvement. It is a lot better improvement from the agent side. Earlier, it used to be every tiny agent for each aspect.
Which other solutions did I evaluate?
Being on the technologies team, I get to use all the products that the people see. We always pick the top three in the market to do the PoC. Dynatrace being reliable, backed up with the support, etc. So, we did a PoC with Dynatrace, New Relic, and AppDynamics. Then, we have chosen this one, which meets all the company standards and requirements.
What other advice do I have?
Definitely implement the solution because I can see the Dynatrace team is working with all the customer requirements. I am hoping to have a better solution by the end of the year.
The importance of the role of AI when it comes to IT's ability to scale in their cloud and manage performance problems:
- AI is not the 100% solution for all organizations.
- It is the common quick solution for all the apps.
If anybody is interested in doing more real analysis and baselining in AI, it really does not work out. I need my SLA for my set of transactions. I do not need somebody telling me and defining that this is your application solely. So, it is good and bad for the solution.
If I had just one solution which could provide real answers, not just data, I would need Dynatrace Managed to be my back-end and I would want AppMon to be the front-end. Basically, I am relying on both the products to fit my exact solution.
Most important criteria when selecting a vendor: I am a supporting person, not the decision maker, but my review is definitely considered and valuable. I am the APM architect in my group with middleware background, which has knowledge on all the moving parts in web application technology, not just monitoring.
Support is the first criteria, because that is the lone factor after purchasing the product. Features, while I am not 100% happy with this, with all the technology and the innovation, Dynatrace has already met this target, but the support is missing. So, the vendor, in my view, as an active technician, needs better support. From a management standpoint, it is the other way around. Also, there is licensing and costs.
Disclosure: PeerSpot contacted the reviewer to collect the review and to validate authenticity. The reviewer was referred by the vendor, but the review is not subject to editing or approval by the vendor.
Performance Engineer at a outsourcing company with 1,001-5,000 employees
Detects issues before they become a major cost factor
Pros and Cons
- "I'd like to see self-healing and I'd also like to see more automation. It looks like is that's the direction Dynatrace is heading in, in their Dynatrace product."
What is our primary use case?
To detect performance issues and user experience, as well.
It performs very well.
How has it helped my organization?
It saves the company money.
What is most valuable?
The ability to detect the issue before it's a major cost.
What needs improvement?
I'd like to see self-healing and I'd also like to see more automation. It looks like is that's the direction Dynatrace is heading in, in their Dynatrace product.
For how long have I used the solution?
Three to five years.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
We haven't had any downtime when using Dynatrace.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
It is highly scalable.
How is customer service and technical support?
Tech support is slow.
Going from the dev department back to the front-end customer service, then back to the dev. Then it just goes back and forth, back and forth, until they finally find a resolution. If you don't push through, then they won't resolve the issue right away. So you have to keep pushing, or they're going to just say, "You need to update."
How was the initial setup?
Straightforward. We did it in-house.
Which other solutions did I evaluate?
I've tried other ones out, AppDynamics and others, as well. What made Dynatrace stand out was ease of use. It more intuitive.
What other advice do I have?
Regarding the importance of the role of AI when it comes to IT's ability to scale in the cloud and manage performance problems, I believe that's the future, the correct direction that we're heading in. We're not in the cloud yet.
We've used siloed monitoring tools in the past. The challenge with that is that one person has all the knowledge, and then when they leave, you're left with nothing. Also, those tools are high-maintenance and there's a lot more manpower going into them.
If there was just one solution that could provide real answers and not just data, so it would tell you, "This is the problem. This is how you would solve it," the immediate benefit for our team would be helping diagnose issues quicker. Self-healing would be ideal.
My most important criteria when selecting a vendor are that it has to be scalable, and I appreciate the forums.
Keep your options open, but Dynatrace is one of the major companies that can resolve your issues.
Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
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Updated: November 2024
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