time sync

[akira_okunobou]

Hi. In the dynatrace SaaS or Managed environment,

if the time of the server on which Oneagent is installed, or the time of the PC on which the browser operates deviates from the correct time,

the correction performed to correct display of Purepath or User session I think there is a way.

Please let me know.

[Julius_Loman]

You should definitely fix the issue on the server itself and configure NTP or other time synchronization on the monitored hosts.
Time offsets/clock drifts are really nasty and will cause issues with collecting metrics or deep monitoring data.

[akira_okunobou]

Thank you very quick answer.

I understood that it is necessary to synchronize the time in the server where OneAgent is introduced and the time of client PC by using NTP server.

I will contact the customer like that.

As an additional question, is there a possibility that the flow of Purepath is also incorrect if the time of the server etc is incorrect?

[Julius_Loman]

As far as I know, the flow should not be incorrect, but I think it might be incomplete. I've seen strange things when there was a drift in time between hosts and Dynatrace server. Don't forget to setup NTP also on the Dynatrace Managed server.

NTP is really crucial here. Subsecond drifts will not be an issue, but drifts as long as several minutes will cause issues.

[akira_okunobou]

Thanks Julius L.

I understood it so clearly.

[Christoph_Neum · Accepted solution]

The Dynatrace OneAgent relies on it's own time synchronization mechanism, rather than the host timing, to make sure distributed traces (PurePaths) are accurate across different hosts (that may have different time-drifts). It receives the time-offset from the current host from the Dynatrace Cluster and it makes sure to correct time-drifts.

The Dynatrace Cluster nodes and Active Gates on the other hand, do rely on the hosts time. It's important to have NTP setup correctly on those hosts. Otherwise OneAgents will be synced with the wrong time and will produce PurePaths that might be off (in the future).

[akira_okunobou]

Thanks Christoph.

I expected this answer.

I can see that such time synchronization is done,

I became a fan of dynatrace more and more.

[rahul_ash1]

Can we monitor NTP sync status(In AIX machine) in dynatrace manages...?