Unrelated processes in the same process group

[dan_hamel]

I have several instances of the same software being monitored in the same environment. While the process names and command lines are the same, they really have nothing to do with each other and shouldn't be in the same process group. I suspect this is a common issue where Dev/Test/Prod are all being monitored but I don't see an easy way segregate the processes to different process groups. Any hints would be appreciated.

[JamesKitson · Accepted solution]

To start with, have you looked at all into custom process group detection?:

https://www.dynatrace.com/support/help/infrastruct...

https://university.dynatrace.com/elearning/dynatra...

James

[Julius_Loman]

Well, in this case you will definitely need to set up process group rules. More info here: https://www.dynatrace.com/support/help/infrastructure/processes/can-i-customize-how-process-groups-a...

If your processes don't have any identifier that can be used to determine app environment, then introducing a new environment variable or java property for this case is probably the best approach.

[hayden_miedema]

You can also use hostgroups to segregate these at the host level, which will force new process groups to be created. This is a good way to do this in certain use cases.

[dan_hamel]

I reviewed the docs and the DyntatraceU video -- good stuff and thanks for the pointers. Unfortunately, this out of the box software has nothing distinguishing in the environment or command line. With three environments 268 tomcat instances auto-detected into 96 process groups, I think that it's going to be impossible keep environment variables up to date. Host groups sound interesting but aren't available in the SaaS offering yet. I was really hoping for something smple along the lines of 'restrict process groups to things with tag X' or 'detect process groups on hosts named *tst*'.