DPS Dashboard Built

[ChadTurner]

For those of you who shifted from the older licensing models which forced customers to buy buckets of associated licenses such as DDU's, DEM, Host Units etc... It was important to track usage outside of the Account Management page which prompted us to build a Dynatrace License Dashboard Suite. 

For Customers who shifted to the DPS model, Which is more of a fiscal commit. Such as, Here is $500k I'll use the platform at a consumption rate per each bucket. Think of it like a gift card to a Mall. I can use the card at any store inside and can use as little or as much at each store as I see fit (Host monitoring, Synthetics, Vulnerability etc...) All while knowing I want to use all the money up on the card before the end of the contract Term. So we revised our License Tracking Dashboard to include the DPS Spend. Please keep in mind this is the bones of it, We have added columns in many of the charts to give us the actual fiscal spend per each 'store'/Dynatrace feature.  This is not included in the template as I'd have to scrub it off anyways on your dashboards since its associated to our contract. 

Never the less, I highly recommend taking a look at the high level overview design: 

1 - This set of dashboards reside in Production, but can reside anywhere you see fit. 

2 - This dashboard goes over our contract, how much we spent and what we get, along with a current count of flexpoints, Exam vouchers etc... We also include the contact information for our Dynatrace Account team.  

3 - Formulated as a single pane of glass to see the spend/counts of usage across all the environments. You can add trending if you see fit. 

4 - These Dashboards will reside in the core environment in which you want to monitor, Production in Production, NonProd in NonProd and so on. 

5 - A more expansive single pane of glass but isolated to just the environment in which it resides. 

6 - A synopsis of DEM Usage.

7 - A more in depth look into your synthetic usage and the breakup of the consumers. 

8 - A Deeper dive into the session counts with and without session replay. 

9 - A synopsis of DDU Usage.

10 - A more in depth look into your Consuming Metric Entities. 

11 - A more in depth look into your Log Entity Consumption. 

12 - A more in depth look into your Consuming Events. 

13 - A more in depth look into your Serverless consumers. 

14 - A more in depth look into your Serverless consumers. 

15 - A more in depth look into your Trace consumers. 

16 - A more in depth look into your Trace consumers. 

Now that is a lot of dashboards and it can be a bit daunting to keep track of the links, so please use the Following Template to copy and paste your IDs into the tracker which will then allow you to post all the dashboards, revisit them, and then update all the associated links. 

Because I'm limited to the amount of attachments, I'll be uploading groupings of the Dashboard Jsons as comments in this posting 🙂 I hope this helps everyone. 

As mentioned I also revised some of the tiles to be a table or a single value which looks at the raw metric number, say User sessions, then apply the costing per user session into the tile which then gives us the Dollar amount that impacts our DPS usage: 

The possibilities are endless.

[DanielS]

Great as usual, @ChadTurner 

[ChadTurner]

Thanks @DanielS  

[ChadTurner]

(Json Set 1 of 4)

**Segment 1 - Overview DPS Dashboard**

Please note, 3 will need a lot of work as there are remote environments that need to be set up prior to onboarding the Json. So however many Environments you have, go ahead and add in the remote environment so they will work. I've also included a stripped down version of Dashboard 3. This way if you dont have remote environments set up, you can still post the dashboard and then clone the Tiles and add a remote environment associated to them. 

I've Also put in **DASHBOARDID** as a place holder where you need to supply your dashboard IDs for linkages. Granted you will also need to update the markdown links as well. 

[ChadTurner]

(Json Set 2 of 4)

**Segment 4 - Production Environment Dashboards and Linkages**

(Dashboards 5-8)

These dashboards will reside in each tenant you have and will not have remote linkages. You should be able to post them right in. Just remember to toss in the generated IDs to the Dashboard ID tracker so you can easily update the links. 

[ChadTurner]

(Json Set 3 of 4)

**Segment 4**

(Dashboards 9-13)

[ChadTurner]

(Json Set 4 of 4)

**Segment 4**

(Dashboards 14-16)

[Julius_Loman]

Thanks @ChadTurner this looks useful. We use a similar set of dashboards for our customers with classic license. First of all, I'd recommend packaging the set of dashboards either as extension 2.0 (easily installable by users, but they will need to import your certificate) or as a Monaco 2 project where you can also template the dashboards (remote environments).

I personally have so far limited experience with DPS but I'm wondering how you are enforcing limits? As far as I know, there are no possibilities. From my experience systems can easily get crazy. I've seen a system suddenly generating terabyte of logs overnight. Even with spending notifications, you can easily burn out your whole commitment. Also since practically every feature is licensed , sometimes you don't have much control over who and what will be sent into Dynatrace for example with local OneAgent ingestion where no authentication is required. DPS is like giving your 5yo child unlimited credit card and sending him to toy store.

[ChadTurner]

All great valid points @Julius_Loman. DPS can become an untamed beast. We caught an issue early where, at some point in time someone flicked on the vulnerability scanner. No biggie as prior to DPS we didnt have any licenses for it, so it didnt run. But now that we have full service, that flicked switched started to incur costs. We caught it early, less than a week in, consumed $1,500 of our DPS Commitment. Which isn't a big deal, but it is a warning to everyone that without strict control it could get out of hand. But thats a negative to it, there are plenty of positives associated. 

Positives

1 - Unrestricted use! Yes it can go either way as just discussed above, but lets say you had a very large presence in VMWare, or Azure, Your organization got the bill for Millions and FinOps kicked in, lets get leaner in terms of our tech costs. Well that reduction in size will then look bad (DPS or not) you could be leaving money on the table as you planned to monitor 50 thousand hosts but that was cut down to 25 thousand, so with Host units you've paid for items your not using now. Sure you can get creative for your ROI, put it on end user devices etc... but thats where DPS comes in... No worries, your host monitoring shrunk, well now you can use that money and put it towards session replay, log ingestion, synthetics, vulnerability scanner, automation engine etc... You really do get the benefit of using the money where you see fit. 

2 - Forecastable Overages! Depending on your contract, Most using Host Units or Host Unit hours, you were susceptible to variable overage changes. Break down that current contract. 1 Host unit = $700. 1 HU X 24 Hours X 365 Days = 8,760 HUH X 0.07990868= $700. Your HUH of 8,760 is how many hours in a year. Once you have consumed all your Host Units or even your Host Unit Hours, you fall into overages. Overages are priced at the Fair Market Value which as anything associated with markets, fluctuates. This potential for fluctuation is each quarter, it could go up, it could go down. So within the contract above your $700 Host Unit is about 7 or 8 cents per hour... well the overage formulate values a Host Unit Hour at 20 Cents, which can add up! 1 HU X 24 Hours X 365 Days = 8,760 HUH X 0.20= $1,752! DPS your locked in at your contract rate Consume as much or as little as you like. Go over your Fiscal allotment, your not going to see a higher rate as we see in the classic billing, rather you are locked in at the current contract rate, which could be equal to $700 per host unit.  Now granted the DPS Formula is different as always with Dynatrace revamped licensing, but the main point is that you can lock in at a rate over or under your spend. 

3 - No more fractionalized usage for Half Stack! Granted this is dependent on your contract, but we saw a drastic reduction in the cost associated with Half Stack (Fractionalized Host Units capped at 1 HU) from that classic methods to the DPS method. With DPS everything is treated as 1 rate. You might ask, well if I don't have my .5 usages I cant get a 2 for the price of 1 HU, and your right, but the cost is drastically reduced, where instead of $700, its $150 for a year of monitoring. I compared them apples to apples, we saved over $1/4 Million by leaving the classic fractionalized method behind.

4 - Cloud Computing, only be billed when its being monitored! This was huge as organizations move to cloud. Think of it, why should I pay $700 per host unit, when the same size server in a cloud environment only runs during core hours, or half a day. Just like Host Unit Hours, you consume when its being monitored  your $700 now drops to $350 for a year of monitoring. 

So those are some positives, The negatives as you mentioned: 

1 - No Limits. You are right, there only true limit there is, is on the Application RUM Sessions and the rate of capture. But that isn't something that cant be worked on or worked around. As mentioned the DPS Tracking dashboard. Hold a firm grasp on those PaaS tokens, limiting Admin access etc... Granted even in the Classic models we had issue with people running wild, especially in the area of synthetics. Running a job every 1 - 5 mins for 30 locations! Thats where leveraging Terraform allowed us to remove certain 'unapproved' locations deemed by the organization as well as remove frequency values so people aren't running them excessively. 

How are we doing it?

With the Admin page where we review usage, Also via that consuming dashboard suite posted here. Reviewing the "Admins" and removing those who are not a true admin or truly needs that function. Reviewing and removing excessive tokens, Imposing a token request process and enforcing short timeframes for the expiry. Its funny you mentioned a Kid with a credit card running wild at a toy store, and really your exactly right, these are just adults in the APM Store! But its our Job as the 'Parent' to say NO, or provide me with the justification as to why you need it? Maybe even take some allowance via "Bill-Back" internally. We also empower our Dynatrace Admins to push back, while providing leadership backing for them. At the end of the day I want to ensure that each DT Admin has the confidence to eloquently say 'No' in the company's best interest while knowing full well that I have their back on it. But also the understanding by our customers that their needs are valid and we are open to the discussion on their monitoring needs, desires or even permission level.  

I hope this shed some additional light into DPS! 

[jegron]

Thank you @ChadTurner !

Just closed 2 Christmas deals with DPS licensing!  I'll be looking at your work carefully.

[Kenny_Gillette]

@ChadTurner great as always.  

[dannemca]

This post come a bit later for me, lol.

I was looking for something exactly like this few months back.

Since I was too lazy to come up with this work, I went out using the default Subscription Overview, which is incredible useful in fact.

In my case, I was looking for one single tenant, so the default view fits me just fine.

My suggestion, @ChadTurner , is you to create a gitpage like this, https://github.com/TechShady/Dynatrace-Dashboards-Gen3 .

[ChadTurner]

@Julius_Loman Dynatrace has also rolled out Cost Events: 

Which will also trigger an email to your emergency contacts.

[ChadTurner]

you can set your own baselines etc... https://docs.dynatrace.com/docs/shortlink/cost-monitors 

[ChadTurner]

Dynatrace has also come out with Notification settings for DPS inside the accounts page: 

[ChadTurner]

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