Is Segments replacing Management Zones?

[ASE]

Hello.

Is Segments a replacement for Management Zones?

If yes, when will Management Zones be deprecated?

Thank you.

[Peter_Youssef]

Hi @ASE 

For Dynatrace managed:

• Management zone will continue as it’s unless otherwise stated by Dynatrace in the upcoming platform release notes.
• it’s recommended to reach out to Dynatrace product expert via live chat if you’re expecting official response.

BR,

Peter

[MarwanC]

I share the view of Peter, Management Zones are your helicopter view of your infrastructure and application and they are strongly linked to tags. The Segments are you low level filters for distributed traces. It does not make sense to deprecate management zones. You will agree with my conclusion if you follow this presentatio so you fully understand the concept of segments. Analyze and filter trace data with Dynatrace | Dynatrace App Spotlights. No panic ASE, you have a good design in place in the MZ design.

[MarwanC]

Sadly, the option to filter dashboards based on Managment Zones is no longer there in the new verison. It seems to be going in that direction. I need to do more digging into this but here is the full documentation if you are interested. Segments — Dynatrace Docs

[christian_k · Accepted solution]

Hello Marwan
There are upcoming improvements for defining Segments (with improved support for tags) on the horizon.

Feel free to reach out in case you identify any blocker for your use cases - would love to understand your background in more detail. 

Best Regards
Christian

[MarwanC]

Thanks Christian, Please connect via linkedIn, happy to connect and share. My linkedIn is in my profile. see also my input in the same topic which I contributed to support Segments as well as Management Zone. A new way to look at Management Zones and the new future design-segments. - Dynatrace Community - These two article need to link to each other as this topic is quite important and relevant. Thanks 

[Islam_Zedan]

Hi ASE,

As per my understanding, Segments are a lower level of separations for the environment, which can work on transactions, events, spans,..etc. you can consider it as a set of filters in one template. Management zone are mainly used for access controls across the environment.

Thanks,

Islam

[ASE]

I was told that "Segments is replacing Management Zones".

We are currently using Management Zones as different environments (PROD, TEST, STAGING, etc..).

We have many Management Zone Rules for each.

When it comes to Problem Alerts, Problem Alerting Profiles, and Slack Notification Integration, Management Zones play a big part in this. For example, if an entity does not have a Management Zone assigned to it (via MZ rules), the Problem Alert won't be associated with a Problem Alerting Profile, causing the alert to not get routed to the relevant Slack channel. It's all interconnected.

With our current Management Zone configuration, we can easily filter our Problem Alerts in the Problems app by Management Zone (Environment). Example: If I only want to see PROD Problem Alerts, I select the PROD Management Zone. It's so easy and works really well for our teams.

My concern is Management Zones being deprecated/replaced and then having to rework/migrate everything to Segments.

Will Segments be this interconnected with Problem Alerts, Problem Alerting Profiles, and Slack Notification Integration like Management Zones are?

I'm hoping I was just misinformed and we'll be able to keep Management Zone configurations as is. 😅

Thank you.

[ASE]

Update regarding this statement:

"With our current Management Zone configuration, we can easily filter our Problem Alerts in the Problems app by Management Zone (Environment). Example: If I only want to see PROD Problem Alerts, I select the PROD Management Zone. It's so easy and works really well for our teams."

I was able to create several Segments that we are now using in the new Problems app that allow us to quickly "filter" by environment (which mirrors what we were able to do in the Problems Classic app).

This is working great for now.

However, my concern still stands. I'm still waiting to see how interconnected Segments will be with our existing 200+ Metric Events, Problem Alerts, Problem Alerting Profiles, and Slack Notification Integrations.

When you create a custom Metric Event, the Management Zone field has a direct effect on whether or not the Problem Alert it generates will be routed to its respective Slack alerting channel.

[christian_k · Accepted solution]

Hello

The answer is "kind of" or "yes but no" 😁

With the introduction of latest Dynatrace we had to find a new way to structure and filter data, as the existing static concept of (rule-based) Management Zones was not capable of supporting the new requirements coming hand-in-hand with the new Grail architecture, as well as the new scalability demands.

As a result, there are three new concepts which all together help admins and users to organize data:

• Buckets: for partitioning data based on requirements such as performance, compliance, retention times or licensing modes.
• (Data) access Control: based on attributes instead of rules - giving you all the flexibility you need to define access to data (and platform functionalities) down to individual records or even fields. 
• Data segmentation and filtering: logically structure your data - across all data types in a fully dynamic and scalable way, globally available across the whole Dynatrace platform

Please note: any app consuming data stored in Grail needs new IAM policies for defining access as well as Segments for filtering. Management Zones are only needed for classic apps and will be retired once we completely switch over to the latest Dynatrace. 

So no, Segments are no direct replacement for Management Zones - but they take over a specific use case in a much more flexible and easier-to-manage way. And yes, also alerting profiles will be bound to Segments.

We know that this is a huge change for existing customers - we are therefor currently crafting guides that help you in transitioning existing Management Zone definitions into Segments to reduce the work needed to an absolute minimum. Expect an update within the next weeks.

If you have detailed questions feel free to reach out to your CSM. 

[ASE]

Thank you, @christian_k.

Do you have any information on how this will impact Metric Events?

We have hundreds of custom Metric Events that are all tied to specific Management Zones.

[Aquilain_3]

Hello, 

Is there an update regarding the guides ?

Regards,

Aquilain

[christian_k]

Hello Aquilain

The doc team is currently working on adding the first guide. Will go live this or next sprint.

Regards
Christian

[jeffrey_valerio]

Hi, 

Is there an update regarding?

[christian_k · Accepted solution]

Hello Jeffrey

See my reply above - first documents are in the making.

Regards
Christian

[Peter_Youssef]

Thanks @christian_k for insightful answer and organized content.

[MarwanC]

All, Please also vote for this one. Thank you.  https://community.dynatrace.com/t5/Product-ideas/Management-Zone-filter-for-New-style-Dashboard/idi-...

[Kenny_Gillette · Accepted solution]

Please see this:

Add in a conversion mechanism to convert the Management Zone to the new Segment Design

Also, you can do a Variable using dql to pull MZs.

Example of a service:

fetch dt.entity.service
| filter isNotNull(managementZones)
| fields managementZones
| dedup managementZones

I know not what most of us are use to but it helps.

[nicolas_nguyen]

Dynatrace has decided to change the model, so they are supposed to help us achieve the same result we have today using MZ and policies.
For now it is not the case, we are in an hybrid state with no clear idea of how to achieve that

[christian_k]

Hello Nicolas

You can be assured that we 100% understand your point. 

Please get in touch with your CSM and point him to this thread. In case they are not sure what to do, let them know they should contact me to support you in your transition journey.

Best Regards
Christian

[MarwanC]

Nicolas, please also vote for this:

https://community.dynatrace.com/t5/Product-ideas/Management-Zone-filter-for-New-style-Dashboard/idi-...