List of Terminology for Synthetic Monitoring

xu_guo — Mon, 20 Oct 2025 09:30:27 GMT

Summary

This article provides a list of Dynatrace Synthetic Monitoring terms and their definitions

Terminology

ActiveGate (AG)

Required to run a private Synthetic location.

Browser Monitor

A Synthetic test that runs in a Chrome browser to simulate a user's browser journey. It uses the Dynatrace JS Agent in order to collect the same timings that we use in RUM.

Clickpath

This is a Browser monitor that consists of one or more synthetic events. These events create are executed as a single browser session/ user journey.

Cluster ActiveGate (CAG)

This is required by for Managed deployments in order for the Dynatrace Cluster to receive Synthetic test results back from the public locations.

DEM units:

Licensing unit that is consumed when running Synthetic HTTP and Browser Monitors. Calculate DEM Consumption

Dynatrace Synthetic Recorder

The Dynatrace Chrome extension that is used to record a clickpath for a Browser Monitor or playback it locally.

Synthetic Event

A single operation within a clickpath, eg clicking on a button.

HTTP Monitor

This synthetic test allows you to make HTTP requests

Multidimensional Analysis (MDA)

Screen which allows you to analyze the individual runs of a synthetic test.

NAM

Network Availability Monitor. These synthetic tests allow you to make Synthetic ICMP, TCP or DNS requests.

Private Synthetic Location

These locations are hosted on the customers own infrastructure. They require a Cluster or Environment ActiveGate with the Synthetic module enabled to be able to run the synthetic tests. You can also create containerized private locations.

Public Location

These locations are hosted by Dynatrace on our cloud infrastructure across the globe to run the customer's synthetic tests.

Synthetic Action

An event within a synthetic browser that triggers a web request that includes a page load, navigation event, or action that triggers an XHR or Fetch request. This consumes DEM Units.

Virtual User Controller (VUC)

This is the controller on a Synthetic location that will receives the tests to run and launch the VUPs to run them.

Virtual User Player (VUP)

This is the Synthetic player on a location, which consists of an instance of Chrome which runs the Synthetic tests and a Chrome extension which communicates with the VUC. There can be many VUP running simultaneously per location.

What's Next

You can add a comment to the article to ask for explanations of further Dynatrace Synthetic terms.

Troubleshooting tips for Synthetic can be found in the Synthetic Troubleshooting Map

Re: List of Terminology for Synthetic Monitoring

ChadTurner — Tue, 10 Jan 2023 14:44:15 GMT

This is great, thanks @xu_guo

article List of Terminology for Synthetic Monitoring in Troubleshooting