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

[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.

[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.