DPS SaaS Cost Intelligence

  Most teams know how much they spend on observability. Far fewer can say why it moved last month, who drove it, and what to do about it. With a Dynatrace Platform Subscription (DPS), that question matters more, because every capability draws from one shared pool. A retention setting, an OpenPipeline rule, a dashboard's auto-refresh interval, and a workflow's query all consume from that pool. Each is a small, ongoing financial decision made by whoever configured it. That's why we're renaming this group from DPS Cost Allocation to DPS SaaS Cost Intelligence. Allocation is still a core topic here. It's now one part of a bigger picture: helping you go from a billing number to an explanation and a next step, without becoming a billing expert first. Where to start: the new "Manage your costs" docs We've rebuilt our documentation around the way cost management actually works. Start at docs.dynatrace.com/docs/manage-your-costs. It follows five steps that build on each other: View: See what you're consuming in Account Management, the ready-made Usage - Overview dashboard, or by exporting cost data via API. Allocate: Tag consumption with cost centers and products so every line item has an owner (showback and chargeback). Predict: Read the built-in forecast, project your run rate with DQL, and estimate new workloads before they hit your bill. Control: Set budgets aligned to your commitment and cost monitors that catch anomalies. When an alert fires, trace it back to the source. Optimize: Send and keep less data, and query it more efficiently, guided by drill-down dashboards for traces, logs, and Full-Stack. If Dynatrace Assist is activated in your environment, you can also ask it cost and usage questions in natural language. What this group is for Ask: "My costs spiked on Tuesday. Where do I start?" Share: Allocation setups, DQL queries, dashboards, and alert configurations that worked for you. (There's also the community examples repository on GitHub.) Shape: Tell us what's missing. We read this group, and your feedback directly informs what we build next. Let's start the conversation Reply below and tell us: Which of the five steps is your biggest challenge today? What question about your DPS spend do you wish you could answer in seconds? Do you share costs across teams? Which allocation model do you use (cost centers, products, both)? We'll answer as many as we can, and the most common questions will shape our next posts. ... View more

Hello Dynatrace Community, We are a long-time user of Dynatrace on the Classic (Host Unit/DEM Unit) licensing model and are currently evaluating the benefits of migrating to the Dynatrace Platform Subscription (DPS). To support our internal business case, we are trying to clearly identify the key capability gaps between the two models. Beyond the obvious shift from a quota-based model to a consumption-based one, what are the fundamental features, modules, or platform technologies that are exclusively available under the DPS license? For example, we are particularly interested in understanding how newer capabilities like Application Security, the Grail™ data lakehouse, and the latest AI-powered enhancements are tied to only the DPS model or are they available on classic as well. If you could point us to any official documentation, blog posts, or resources that clearly outline these differences, it would be extremely helpful for our decision-making process. Thank you for your insights. ... View more

Hi all,  We want to create a cost allocation dashboard with using Segments. Is there a way of doing that? We did tried creating segments but what we see that does not work directly on the dashboard that has been shared here by @Sophie_Mayerw . The data not coming if we select a specific segment.  We also tried just putting only one billing metric on a dashboard but that one also not giving result, data not coming if one segment is selected. Maybe we did understand the segments wrong or the cost allocation dashboard idea. But we do not go with tags on OneAgent or host instead just use the Segments. Any experience or ideas ? Thanks in advance, Gokmen   ... View more

Hi everyone, I wanted to share something that might be helpful for those exploring Cost Allocation via Account Management. Below is an example of what a CSV export of this data looks like.   If you'd like to try exporting the data yourself, you can follow the step-by-step instructions in our documentation: 👉 Export Cost Allocation Data   ⚠️ Important: Make sure you've configured Cost Allocation first! If not, you’ll encounter an error message saying there’s no data available.   I’d love to hear your thoughts: Does this data meet your expectations? Would you prefer it in a different format or accessible in another way?   Let me know what you think! Your feedback is super valuable.   Best regards, Sophie ... View more

Cost Allocation in Azure Container Apps (ACA) — Supported way to set dt.cost.costcenter and dt.cost.product? We are actively using Dynatrace DPS Cost Allocation for: On-prem hosts (OneAgent-managed Azure VMs (OneAgent-managed) Kubernetes workloads (via pod annotations) These environments correctly classify usage based on the documented cost tags: dt.cost.costcenter dt.cost.product Use case: Azure Container Apps (ACA) We also monitor several workloads running in Azure Container Apps using the OneAgent deployed inside the container image. The agent reports data successfully; however: These ACA OneAgents cannot be managed via Deployment Status (expected for PaaS container environments). Therefore, we cannot set host tags (dt.cost.*) via UI or OneAgent configuration. We would like these ACA workloads to participate in DPS Cost Allocation the same way our VMs and on-prem systems do. Is applying cost allocation supported for ACA? ... View more

     Perform season is almost here       — and we’ve got a great session lined up for you. We’re running a Training Session at Perform (thanks @danilo_vukotic )   Getting started: How to set up Dynatrace   Discover the benefits of Dynatrace platform and how to be prepared for enterprise scale. In this hands-on training session, we guide you through the main concepts of Dynatrace: Ingest data and enriching at source Data partitioning and organization using buckets Flexible data access management using IAM and policies Dynamic filtering for smart data segmentation using Segments Allocating DPS costs Every journey starts with the first step. Start strong, start smart! Feel free to join and share — it’s a great way to spend your time at Perform. ... View more

What is DPS Cost Allocation? The Dynatrace Cost Allocation function lets you allocate Dynatrace DPS usage and costs to your cost centers and products that utilize Dynatrace functionality. You can designate cost centers or products for Dynatrace Cost Allocation and associate those with the hosts that utilize Dynatrace resources. This provides a transparent and detailed account of each cost center’s Dynatrace expenditure, helping your organization optimize its budgets.  The Dynatrace Cost Allocation feature incorporates two fields for cost centers and products. You can use either or both fields. These fields reflect your company's Cost Allocation structure, enabling you to develop two distinct perspectives: one based on your cost centers (for example, departments) and another based on your products or services (for example, Application name or Application ID). Of course, you can customize the use of these fields to fit your company's organizational framework.  What is supported? The Dynatrace Cost Allocation release in October 2024 provides support for the following capabilities under DPS:  Full-Stack Monitoring  Infrastructure Monitoring  Mainframe Monitoring  Foundation & Discovery  Runtime Vulnerability Analytics  Runtime Application Protection  The current release provides account-level details via API or CSV export from the Account Management Portal.  In addition, visualization can be done with all platform features within the environments (e.g. Dashboards, Notebooks)    Which use cases can it solve? Dynatrace Cost Allocation offers support for several Finops-related use cases. Here are a few of them:   Chargeback  Enables customers to charge costs to their internal or external Dynatrace users.  Provides a detailed overview of capability usage and expenses.  Particularly useful for service providers or enterprise clients with several cost owners.    Showback  Allows Dynatrace users to track ongoing usage and spending.  Provides detailed daily or weekly overviews without invoicing departments.  Promotes cost awareness and departmental ownership.  Example: A mid-sized software company might use showback to display usage and spending to their users.    Budget management  Helps customers manage their yearly expenses more effectively.  Helps identifying the major cost drivers.  Enables better planning.    Faster Adoption  Speeds up the adoption of current and new capabilities.  Allows administrators to track which departments and applications are using these capabilities and their consumption levels.  Enables better planning for implementing these capabilities in other areas.    How should i start? These examples serve as a general guide for companies aiming to report usage and costs internally or to customers. We suggest reporting at the highest possible level, such as Business Unit, Department, or Geography, for maintainability.  Example 1: Chargeback - Large Enterprise leveraging FinOps  Innovatech Solutions is an enterprise software company with multiple business units. Each unit is responsible for its software applications and receives an annual maintenance budget.  Innovatech aims to provide monthly cost reports to their business units, detailing costs attributed to their specific areas and giving an overview of the application consumption. They also want to import this data into Flexera to combine it with other vendor costs, enabling them to send an annual invoice to each business unit.  According to the Dynatrace Cost Allocation documentation, they defined a naming convention and configuration strategy. The configuration strategy includes how to set OneAgent host tags for all relevant hosts and how to manage the allow list. The Innovatech Administrator used the Dynatrace Cost Allocation Dashboard (available via Playground or Community Platform) to monitor the progress of the deployment. He set up an automated Account Management API call to export usage and cost data for import into Flexera.  At the end of each month, he distributed a combined cost overview to each business unit, providing detailed information on usage and costs broken down by product (application). At the close of each fiscal year, he sent a bill to each business unit itemizing all incurred expenses.  Example 2: Showback – Mid-sized company   TechNova Enterprises, a mid-sized company, has struggled with consumption control in the past, prompting the need for a showback scenario. They wish to provide their departments with dashboards showing current consumption to avoid unexpected costs.   Following the Dynatrace Cost Allocation documentation, they defined their naming and configuration strategy, including setting OneAgent host tags and managing the allow list. Using the Dynatrace Cost Allocation Dashboard, the TechNova Administrator monitored deployment progress and provided each department with a modified dashboard to track usage and costs, helping them respond to unexpected changes.    More details can be found in the DPS Cost Allocation Documentation: https://docs.dynatrace.com/docs/manage/dynatrace-platform-subscription/cost-allocation ... View more

 Couple of questions: 1.  I understand the current maximum limit is 250 for dt.cost.center and 250 for dt.cost.product and I understand it is per dynatrace account and not based on per tenant. Correct? 2.  I have a bank customer where they are only less than 50 cost center but they have around 5000 apps/products. How does the customer go about using the cost allocation ? ... View more

Dear community members, Please make sure you have read this documentation, before using the Cost Allocation Dashboard: https://docs.dynatrace.com/docs/manage/dynatrace-platform-subscription/cost-allocation   The DPS Cost Allocation dashboard allows you to view your current cost-field enrolment status, along with the usage and expenses associated with each supported capability. Use the top left section to navigate between different capabilities. The variables in the top middle area enable you to adjust the pricing according to your rate card.  You can use this Dashboard as a foundation to create your own usage and cost summaries, which can then be shared with your colleagues internally. If you have any queries or suggestions for improvement, don't hesitate to share them by posting in this group. ... View more