Can you create custom devices with a OneAgent plugin?

[larry_roberts]

I have built a OneAgent plugin for Tibco EMS which collects queue names and their depths and places them all under the Tibco EMS process in Dynatrace. The problem however is that the Tibco EMS core is owned and support by one team, while individual queues are owned by multiple teams making assigning ownership a major pain.

Because of this, I want to no longer place them all under the Tibco EMS process and instead create a custom device for each and every queue. It appears I am not able to create custom devices through a OneAgent plugin though. I found this in the forum....

With ActiveGate plugins, you create new entities of CUSTOM DEVICE type.
With OneAgent plugins you cannot create entities, you just send data to entities discovered by the underlying OneAgent (in fact just process and host metrics).

Is this true that you can not create custom devices from a OneAgent plugin?

Thanks!

[Mike_L · Accepted solution]

That is true, you need to use an either an ActiveGate plugin or the API to create custom devices.

That being said, going that route means that the AI won't look at the metrics you're sending in as there won't be any link between the services and the custom devices.

[larry_roberts]

Thanks - Now I am extremely curious as to why this ability does not exist for OneAgent plugins?

[Mike_L]

OneAgent plugins are meant to extend the monitoring of a process and add additional metrics to be used by the AI. ActiveGate plugins are meant to monitor devices where a OneAgent cannot be installed, such as proxies and load balancers (ergo the creation of custom devices).

[larry_roberts]

Right and that makes sense, but there are cases such as mine here where you might need to create a custom devices and / or devices.

[Mike_L]

Post that as an idea in the RFE forum.