topic Re: Management zone to identify orphan entities in Open Q&A

Management Zone to identify orphan entities

tmathew — Mon, 29 Dec 2025 11:29:33 GMT

Is it possible to create a management zone that identifies all entities not included in any existing management zone? I’d like this zone to capture entities across multiple types—such as Applications, Hosts, Synthetic Tests, HTTP Checks, and Custom Devices—so we can easily review any uncovered resources.

Thanks

Re: Management zone to identify orphan entities

AntonPineiro — Sat, 13 Sep 2025 12:38:49 GMT

Hi,

I would say creating those management zones base on tagging rules.

Then, you can define that logic base on tags:

If tag is present, MZ A.
If tag is not present, MZ B.

Best regards

Re: Management zone to identify orphan entities

t_pawlak — Sat, 13 Sep 2025 15:47:19 GMT

Hi,
unfortunately, there is no such option from the GUI.
The only thing I can suggest is retrieving this data via the API.
First, list all entities by type, then for each entityID check if it has an assigned MZ.
Below, I’m pasting a script that will list this for you.

#!/usr/bin/env python3 import os, csv, json, time, re, argparse import requests from concurrent.futures import ThreadPoolExecutor, as_completed # ========================= # CONFIGURATION (CHANGE HERE) # ========================= DT_BASE_URL = "https://dynatrace/e/tenantid" # WITHOUT /api/v2 at the end DT_API_TOKEN = "dt0c01. API TOKEN" # token with "Monitored entities – read" permission (API v2) # Types you want to check TYPES = ["APPLICATION", "HOST", "SYNTHETIC_TEST", "HTTP_CHECK", "CUSTOM_DEVICE"] # Files OUT_CSV = "unassigned_entities.csv" OUT_JSON = "unassigned_entities.json" # Technical parameters PAGE_SIZE = 500 TIMEOUT_SEC = 30 MAX_WORKERS = 8 # ========================= def _normalize_base_url(u: str) -> str: if not u: raise RuntimeError("DT_BASE_URL not set") u = re.sub(r"/api/v2/?$", "", u.strip()) return u.rstrip("/") def _headers(): return { "Authorization": f"Api-Token {DT_API_TOKEN}", "accept": "application/json; charset=utf-8", } def list_entity_ids(base_url: str, entity_type: str): """Step 1: Returns a list of entityIds for a given type""" ids = [] next_key = None url = f"{base_url}/api/v2/entities" while True: if next_key: params = {"nextPageKey": next_key} else: params = {"entitySelector": f'type("{entity_type}")', "pageSize": str(PAGE_SIZE)} r = requests.get(url, headers=_headers(), params=params, timeout=TIMEOUT_SEC) if r.status_code == 429: time.sleep(1.0) continue r.raise_for_status() data = r.json() for e in data.get("entities", []): eid = e.get("entityId") if eid: ids.append(eid) next_key = data.get("nextPageKey") if not next_key: break return ids def get_entity_details(base_url: str, entity_id: str): url = f"{base_url}/api/v2/entities/{entity_id}" params = {"fields": "+managementZones,+tags,+firstSeenTms,+lastSeenTms"} # <= FIX for attempt in range(5): r = requests.get(url, headers=_headers(), params=params, timeout=TIMEOUT_SEC) if r.status_code == 429: time.sleep(0.5 * (attempt + 1)) continue if not r.ok: return { "entityId": entity_id, "type": "", "displayName": "", "firstSeenTms": None, "lastSeenTms": None, "managementZonesCount": None, "error": f"{r.status_code} {r.text[:1000]}", } data = r.json() mz = data.get("managementZones") or [] return { "entityId": data.get("entityId", entity_id), "type": data.get("type", ""), "displayName": data.get("displayName", ""), "firstSeenTms": data.get("firstSeenTms"), "lastSeenTms": data.get("lastSeenTms"), "managementZonesCount": len(mz), } return { "entityId": entity_id, "type": "", "displayName": "", "firstSeenTms": None, "lastSeenTms": None, "managementZonesCount": None, "error": "Too many 429s", } def main(): base_url = _normalize_base_url(DT_BASE_URL) if not DT_API_TOKEN or DT_API_TOKEN.startswith("dt0c01.xxxxx"): raise RuntimeError("Set the correct DT_API_TOKEN in the script header") all_ids = [] per_type_counts = {} # Krok 1 — listing ID for t in TYPES: print(f"[INFO] Step1: listing the ID for the type: {t}") ids = list_entity_ids(base_url, t) per_type_counts[t] = len(ids) all_ids.extend(ids) print(f"[OK] {t}: {len(ids)} entity") # Krok 2 — szczegóły print(f"[INFO] Step2: fetching details of {len(all_ids)} entities in parallel ({MAX_WORKERS} threads)") details = [] unassigned = [] with ThreadPoolExecutor(max_workers=MAX_WORKERS) as ex: futures = {ex.submit(get_entity_details, base_url, eid): eid for eid in all_ids} for f in as_completed(futures): rec = f.result() details.append(rec) if rec.get("error"): print(f"[WARN] {rec['entityId']}: {rec['error']}") continue if rec.get("managementZonesCount", 0) == 0: unassigned.append(rec) # Save fields = ["entityId", "type", "displayName", "firstSeenTms", "lastSeenTms", "managementZonesCount"] with open(OUT_CSV, "w", newline="", encoding="utf-8") as f: w = csv.DictWriter(f, fieldnames=fields) w.writeheader() for r in unassigned: w.writerow(r) with open(OUT_JSON, "w", encoding="utf-8") as f: json.dump(unassigned, f, ensure_ascii=False, indent=2) # Summary print("\n=== SUMMARY ===") for t, c in per_type_counts.items(): print(f"{t}: {c} (all)") print(f"without MZ: {len(unassigned)}") print(f"Pliki: {OUT_CSV} | {OUT_JSON}") if __name__ == "__main__": main()

Re: Management zone to identify orphan entities

michiel_otten — Mon, 15 Sep 2025 08:32:04 GMT

I would say this would definitely work. Tagging resources is imo the most important step for ordering entities and metrics. So you would simply base your management zones upon tags.

Let's say you have created a Management Zone based upon an Application tag:MyApplication.
You can than negate the management zone like this for hosts:

type("HOST"), not(tag("MyApplication"))

You could also just create a notebook / dashboard where you write an DQL statement that pulls these metrics and combine it with other usefull stuff like updates failed, hosts not in host groups / network zones etc.

Re: Management zone to identify orphan entities

tmathew — Tue, 16 Sep 2025 20:24:56 GMT

Thank you all for the ideas and solutions. I truly appreciate your time and effort in helping me work toward resolving the problem.

Re: Management zone to identify orphan entities

tmathew — Thu, 18 Sep 2025 19:00:46 GMT

Hi tomaxp,

Thanks again for the code. I tried running it and ran in to the below error :

Appreciate if you could have a look and give suggestions to fix it.

Thanks.

C:\Users\thomas.mathew>Python FindOrphanMZ.py

[INFO] Step1: listing the ID for the type: APPLICATION

Traceback (most recent call last):

File "C:\Users\thomas.mathew\FindOrphanMZ.py", line 168, in <module>

main()

File "C:\Users\thomas.mathew\FindOrphanMZ.py", line 125, in main

ids = list_entity_ids(base_url, t)

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

File "C:\Users\thomas.mathew\FindOrphanMZ.py", line 58, in list_entity_ids

r.raise_for_status()

File "C:\Users\thomas.mathew\AppData\Local\Packages\PythonSoftwareFoundation.Python.3.12_qbz5n2kfra8p0\LocalCache\local-packages\Python312\site-packages\requests\models.py", line 1026, in raise_for_status

raise HTTPError(http_error_msg, response=self)

requests.exceptions.HTTPError: 404 Client Error: Not Found for url: https://{environmentid}.apps.dynatrace.com/api/v2/entities?entitySelector=type%28%22APPLICATION%22%29&pageSize=500

C:\Users\thomas.mathew>

Re: Management zone to identify orphan entities

t_pawlak — Fri, 19 Sep 2025 08:30:28 GMT

HI @tmathew
Thanks for trying it out! The 404 comes from calling the wrong host for API v2. In Dynatrace SaaS, API v2 lives at *.live.dynatrace.com (not *.apps.dynatrace.com). In Managed, it’s your cluster URL with /e/<environmentId>.

I’ve just tested it against apps.dynatrace.com and it worked. On some “Latest Dynatrace” tenants, certain endpoints of the classic Environment API v2 are also exposed via *.apps.dynatrace.com (typically as a proxy to the classic APIs).

Please try switching
https://{environmentid}.live.dynatrace.com
and test again.

Re: Management zone to identify orphan entities

tmathew — Tue, 23 Sep 2025 00:03:00 GMT

Hi tomaxp,

Excellent — thank you so much! It worked perfectly.

I was also wondering if there’s a way to convert this into a dashboard — specifically, one that would list all entities that are not assigned to any Management Zone.

Re: Management zone to identify orphan entities

t_pawlak — Tue, 23 Sep 2025 06:54:29 GMT

You can upload the script's output to Dynatrace as a metric. If you run it once a day, it shouldn't use much license space.
https://docs.dynatrace.com/docs/discover-dynatrace/references/dynatrace-api/environment-api/metric-v2/post-ingest-metrics

Re: Management zone to identify orphan entities

tmathew — Mon, 01 Dec 2025 17:04:33 GMT

Thank you t_pawlak. Appreciate your help.