📚 End-to-End Monitoring of Enterprise Storage with Dynatrace: FAQs

[theharithsa]

1) Does the tool support agentless and agent-based monitoring for SAN environments?

Yes. Dynatrace supports both:

• Agent-based monitoring: By installing OneAgent on servers or virtual machines that interact with SAN devices, Dynatrace captures disk-level metrics like IOPS, throughput, and latency. While it doesn’t run directly on SAN hardware, it can monitor the performance impact from the system’s perspective.
• Agentless monitoring: For true SAN visibility, Dynatrace provides agentless integration using Extensions v2. These extensions can query SAN devices via SNMP, REST APIs, or vendor CLIs to ingest detailed storage metrics into the Dynatrace platform without deploying agents on the SAN hardware.

2) What is the architecture of the monitoring solution (centralized vs distributed)?

Dynatrace uses a hybrid-centralized architecture:

• The SaaS backend (Dynatrace Cluster/Grail) provides centralized data storage, AI-based analytics (Davis AI), and UI access. - Data collection is distributed, using OneAgents and ActiveGates:
• OneAgent gather telemetry from hosts and applications.
• ActiveGate support secure data forwarding, network zone bridging, and SNMP/API-based extension execution. This allows scalable observability across distributed infrastructures while managing data ingestion and analytics centrally.
  
  

3) What SAN storage vendors and models are natively supported?

Dynatrace does not have out-of-the-box native integrations for SAN vendors, but supports them via extensions. Commonly supported vendors include:

• NetApp ONTAP (via ONTAP REST API)
• HPE 3PAR/Alletra (via SSMC or SNMP)
• Dell EMC (Unity/PowerMax) (via Unisphere REST or CLI)
• IBM FlashSystem (via REST API or CLI) Support depends on the SAN device exposing metrics over SNMP, CLI, or REST interfaces. The Extension Framework v2 allows full flexibility to model custom SAN integrations.

4) Can it monitor performance metrics such as IOPS, throughput (MBps), and latency at different levels?

Yes, with proper integration:

• LUN level: If the SAN device exposes per-LUN metrics via SNMP or API, Dynatrace can collect and visualize them.
• Volume/Pool level: Most SAN APIs expose volume and pool stats like IOPS, bandwidth, utilization – all ingestible into Dynatrace.
• Port/Controller level: These are typically available via SNMP on the SAN device and supported via custom extension logic.

5) Does it provide health status of SAN components like controllers, switches, HBAs, and interconnects?

Yes – provided this information is exposed by the SAN or switch device:

• Controllers and ports: Health states and error counts can be pulled via SNMP or REST APIs.
• Fibre switches (e.g., Brocade): You can use SNMP polling to monitor port status, CRC errors, and link failures.
• HBAs: While not directly visible unless logged by the OS, their errors can be inferred via host metrics or logs.

6) Can it detect path failures, fabric issues, or degraded RAID groups?

Partially, with the right integration:

• Path failures/fabric issues can be detected via SNMP traps or polling fabric switches.
• Degraded RAID groups can be identified if the SAN vendor exposes array health or rebuild status in its API/SNMP.
• These metrics can trigger Davis AI alerts or custom events when deviation is detected.

7) What types of availability metrics are tracked?

Dynatrace can track availability at multiple levels:

• Host-level uptime (via OneAgent)
• SAN device reachability (via ActiveGate polling)
• Service and process availability related to storage interfaces
• Failover events can be tracked via logs, events API, or metrics emitted by the SAN

How frequently does it collect and refresh performance data?

• OneAgent-based metrics: Collected every 10 seconds by default
• Custom extensions (API/SNMP): Typical polling interval is 60 seconds (configurable based on performance needs)
• Dashboards and Notebooks update near-real time (few seconds latency)

9) Does it track performance degradation over time or provide anomaly detection?

Yes:

• - Dynatrace automatically builds baselines for all numeric metrics.
• - Davis AI analyzes historical patterns and flags abnormal drops, spikes, or sustained degradations.
• - This includes metrics like IOPS, latency, and throughput if they are ingested.

10) Are historical trends and baseline thresholds supported for proactive analysis?

Yes:

• Dynatrace stores metric data in Grail for long-term retention and analysis.
• You can compare performance over time, across devices, and set static or dynamic thresholds for early warning.
• Dashboards, Notebooks, and DQL queries enable rich trend visualization and proactive insights.

11) Can it interface with virtualization layers (VMware vCenter, Hyper-V)?

Yes:

• VMware vCenter: Fully supported via native integration. Provides visibility into VMs, datastores, hosts, and network layers.
• Hyper-V: Monitored through Windows OS using OneAgent, which collects disk, memory, and network stats.

12) Is API access available for custom integrations?

Yes. Dynatrace offers a rich set of APIs:

• Metrics Ingest API – Push custom SAN metrics
• Events API – Post failover or alert events
• Topology & Configuration API – Define custom entities like LUNs, ports, controllers
• OpenTelemetry support for logs, metrics, traces

13) How many SAN devices and ports can the solution monitor without performance degradation?

There is no hard limit, but practical performance depends on:

• Number of ActiveGates - Polling interval
• Metric volume Well-tuned environments can ingest tens of thousands of metrics per minute. Dynatrace recommends segmenting large SAN environments across multiple extensions or ActiveGates.

14) Can it handle distributed environments across data centers or regions?

Yes:

• ActiveGates can be deployed per site or region.
• OneAgent and extensions can collect metrics locally and send them to the centralized SaaS backend.
• Management zones, tags, and Smartscape make cross-site analysis seamless.

15) How does it scale horizontally/vertically to meet enterprise storage growth?

• Horizontally: Add more ActiveGates or deploy multiple extensions.
• Vertically: Increase CPU/memory on existing ActiveGates.
• Cloud-native: Dynatrace SaaS backend automatically scales ingestion, storage, and compute to handle growth without manual intervention.

16) How intuitive is the user interface for storage teams?

Highly intuitive:

• Custom dashboards for SAN metrics
• Notebooks for interactive exploration
• Smartscape topology to visualize dependencies
• Drag-and-drop interface for creating charts, heatmaps, tables, and alerts

17) How easy is it to onboard new SAN systems or discover changes automatically?

• Onboarding: Manual configuration via extensions (host/IP, SNMP creds, polling config)
• Automation: Fully scriptable via API or Terraform
• Discovery: SAN hardware discovery is not native, but changes in metric data (e.g., new volumes) can be detected and visualized

18) Are firmware/software compatibility checks available?

Not natively.

• If the firmware version is exposed via SNMP or API, it can be ingested as a custom property.
• DQL queries or alert policies can flag known-bad versions.

19) How are custom dashboards or alert policies created and maintained?

• Dashboards: Created via GUI or DQL; support filters, templates, and role-based access
• Alerts: Created using:
  • Static thresholds
  • Adaptive baselines
  • Davis AI (automated)

Maintained through UI, REST API, or Infrastructure as Code (e.g., Terraform)

Final Note: Dynatrace provides a flexible, scalable foundation for SAN monitoring via its extension framework. With the right SNMP/API integration, it delivers deep insights into storage health, performance, and anomalies—empowering storage, infra, and SRE teams alike.