Dynatrace Managed vs Dynatrace on Saas Environment

[i_momouh]

Hello, Does anyone know the real differences between Dynatrace Managed and Dynatrace Saas? My company is moving from Managed to SaaS and we want to know the implications and differences this procedure is going to take. I haven't found any real documentation on Internet.

[arturo_mondelo]

Hi,

This summarizes the difference between them:

https://www.dynatrace.com/platform/deployment-models/

The main difference is if your Company provide the infrastructure or is provided on the cloud!

[i_momouh]

Thank you Arturo,

There is information but not enough. It lacks a lot of information, i.e bind values are not allowed in SaaS environment or the data retentions between each environment.

I guess there is no detailed documentation about this topic.

Thank you once again.

[arturo_mondelo]

There are no much differences regarding the info collected. It's true bind values are not allowed on saas (mainly due to high network and storage demands) but for instance, data retention is the same.

Will try to do a deep search on this topic and let you know if i find any documentation that emphasizes on the differences.

Regards

[Julius_Loman]

@Arturo M. not true about the retention. With Managed you can define retention times for various data categories such as Service Level Data. This is not available with SaaS (fixed retention times for everyone).

The other very big topic is auditing. In SaaS you have almost no audit trail of what users are doing in your tenants.

There are also other implications such as user repository that have to be taken into consideration.

Just wondering - @Imad M. what are your reasons to migrate from Managed to SaaS?

[i_momouh]

I would appreciate. Thank you so much.

Kind regards.

[Radu · Accepted solution]

Hi Imad,

Some things to keep in mind between the two deployment modes:

• With Dynatrace Managed you have an additional component to manage (besides the obvious server cluster) - the Cluster ActiveGate. Read more about the scenarios for a cluster activegate here. With SaaS, the Cluster ActiveGate is hosted and managed by Dynatrace in the cloud.
• With Dynatrace Managed, there is no limit to how many API calls you can make to the Dynatrace APIs whereas with SaaS we need to ensure a fair use and impose a rate limit of max. 50 requests per minute per API endpoint. This may be noticeable in very large environments where there is a lot of automated use of the API endpoints.
• Tenants (environments) can be created by yourself through the Cluster Management Console however you wish on Dynatrace Managed. However, with SaaS this isn't as straightforward and requires involving our Support department. This may be important in situations when you need a lot of dynamic subdivisions of the cluster that also require separation of monitoring settings access or different storage quotas. Read more here
• Managed supports both SSO and LDAP integration for user access management, whereas SaaS only supports SSO.
• Adding your own SSL certificates and modifying the base URLs for each environment can only be done in Managed (e.g. https://my-company.com/e/environemnt1/...) otherwise SaaS autogenerates it as https://{tenant-id}.live.dynatrace.com/. Read more on it here
• There are the obvious additional considerations for Log Monitoring Premium and Session Replay where you will need to calculate and provide adequate storage for the central log repository as well as the additional storage incurred by session replay features
• Also speaking about storage, on SaaS storage of data (data retention policy) is fixed. However, on Managed you can extend the data storage for however much storage space you add to the server. More on this here
• Also a good one, on Dynatrace Managed you have access to the Audit Log that we keep of interactions to the environments and servers. With SaaS this is not possible via the UI, but maybe in the case of a critical support ticket our department might be able to access it on your behalf. More on what data is available via Audit log here.
• With Managed you will need to connect an SMTP server for email notification delivery, otherwise with SaaS that's included and using our email server.

That's all that I can think of off the top of my head.

Most of these apply in case of large or very large companies, or companies operating in restrictive sectors with tighter policy enforcement or different operation models (where maybe you host Dynatrace environments for other end customers and they have restrictions/policies, etc.).

For most small to medium companies, SaaS just saves a lot of scoping/work/management and streamlines things, but Managed is there to put all of that in your hands.

Best regards,

Radu

[i_momouh]

Thank you so much for the feedback. Appreciate it.

[jeroen_hautekee]

Audit logging is now also available on SaaS (and managed) at the tenant/environment level, by means of API calls.

[Radoslaw_Szulgo]

Updates:

- SaaS: You can use LDAP with SCIM. Read here.

- Managed: you do not need SMTP. Mission Control can send emails on behalf of cluster.

- Managed: Starting with 1.214 there's the same (as in SaaS) automatic and dynamic adjustment for rate limit of Environment and Configuration REST API. Cluster API is still unlimited. Rate limit can be turned off.

[uros_djukic1]

Updates :
- SQL bind variable only supported in Managed 

- During the creation of payload when you create a problem notification, more permissive with JSON placeholder like {ProblemDetailsText} in Saas unlike to Managed !  

- Need to add Public IP in Managed, in order to avoid lack/missing on oneagent features for instance.

[i_momouh]

Hi @Julius L. Basically we are using Dynatrace Managed but we might not be taking all the advantages of its use. So it's basically a cost issue. The idea is to pay less by moving to SaaS and would like to know which or what resources or limitations are present in SaaS. That's the whole idea.

[Julius_Loman]

I don't know your license, but pricing is exactly the same for SaaS and Managed. You just don't need to provision the VMs for Dynatrace Managed infrastructure. Just check the differences mentioned here, there are many small differences that might be important in your case.

[fstekelenburg · Accepted solution]

Since the recent developments I think this topic can use also a (major) update.

The Managed release notes include that of SaaS, but significant parts of SaaS are not available for Managed (and probably never will be). Which perhaps calls for more separation or clear tagging of functionality availability in SaaS, Managed, or both.

The current differences are summarized in this overview: 
https://www.dynatrace.com/support/help/upgrade/up-information#saas-versus-managed-differences

(the previous link posted by Arturo does no longer lead to the comparison data)

I think the differences can and should be outlined more prominent somewhere.
(E.g. it's not directly evident whether or not the new Workflow (app) is depending on AppEngine, and therefor only available to SaaS)

[Radoslaw_Szulgo]

That is absolutely correct feedback. Thanks for posting! With this, I ask you and other community members for a little more patience. More significance is coming soon to the documentation and release notes.