Configure OpenTelemetry metrics ingest

Dynatrace version 1.254+

Dynatrace offers several options for configuring how your OpenTelemetry metrics are ingested and enriched.

To make these configuration changes, go to Settings > Metrics > OpenTelemetry metrics.

These settings affect your metric dimensions. Modifying any of them will cause your metrics to change, which may have an impact on existing dashboards, events, and alerts that make use of these dimensions. In this case, they will need to be updated manually.

Add Meter name and version as metric dimensions

When Add Meter name and version as metric dimensions is turned on, the Meter name (also referred to as InstrumentationScope or InstrumentationLibrary in OpenTelemetry SDKs) and version are automatically added as dimensions (otel.scope.name and otel.scope.version) to ingested OTLP metrics.

Configure resource and scope attributes to be added as dimensions

In the section Allow list: resource and scope attributes you can configure which resource and scope attributes to add as dimensions to ingested OTLP metrics.

When the toggle Add the resource and scope attributes configured below as dimensions is turned on, the attributes defined in the list will be added as dimensions to ingested OTLP metrics if they are present in the OpenTelemetry resource or in the instrumentation scope.

Dynatrace defines a set of default attributes that we consider relevant and beneficial to have on all of your metrics. You can modify the defaults and add extra attributes that you want to have in all of your metrics from the OpenTelemetry resource/instrumentation scope.

The attributes configured on the settings page are only added as dimensions to ingested OTLP metrics when the toggle Add the resource and scope attributes configured below as dimensions (see above) is turned on.
Even though you can modify the default attribute list, Dynatrace does not recommend that you change or remove attributes starting with dt.*. Dynatrace uses these attributes to enrich ingested metrics with Dynatrace-specific dimensions.
Dynatrace allows a maximum of 50 dimensions per metric. For details, see Limits. This configuration, along with the deny list documented below, allows to control the number of dimensions to stay within this limit.

Name conflicts

See Attribute ingestion for details on how Dynatrace ingests data of different attributes sharing the same name.

Configure attributes to be dropped

In the section Deny list: all attributes you can configure which attributes to drop from all ingested OTLP metrics.

Upon ingest, the Allow list: resource and scope attributes above is applied first. Then, the Deny list: all attributes is applied. The deny list therefore applies to all attributes from all sources (data points, scope, and resource).

You can use the deny list to remove attributes that you deem not relevant for your use case. For example, you can use the deny list to remove high-cardinality attributes that may be added outside your control (e.g., by instrumentation libraries or resource detectors).

Dynatrace does not recommend adding attributes starting with dt.* to the deny list. Dynatrace uses these attributes to enrich ingested metrics with Dynatrace-specific dimensions.