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Process groups

Dynatrace automatically merges related processes into process groups. A “process group” is a logical cluster of processes that belong to the same application or deployment unit and perform the same function across multiple hosts. Process groups are key building blocks of most modern web-based applications.

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Dynatrace automatically detects application types such as Tomcat, JBoss, Apache HTTP Server, MongoDB, and many others technologies. To create process groups, Dynatrace uses specific process properties. For Tomcat, Dynatrace uses CATALINA_HOME and CATALINA_BASE to distinguish between different Tomcat clusters. For JBoss, Dynatrace uses JBOSS_HOME and the JBoss cluster configuration. For generic Java processes, Dynatrace uses the JAR file or the main class used to start the process. There are also many specialized detection mechanisms. For example, Dynatrace can detect:

  • IBM WebSphere clusters and domains
  • Oracle WebLogic clusters and domains
  • Cassandra clusters
  • Tibco BusinessWorks engines
  • Kubernetes apps
  • OpenShift apps
  • Cloud Foundry apps
  • Azure Web Apps
  • And more…

On each process overview page you'll find the properties if you expand Properties and tags.

What does this mean for services?

Process groups are the basis for service detection, because each process group is considered to be a logical cluster or single deployment. When Dynatrace detects the "same" service in separate process groups, it treats them as separate services (for example, one process might be used in staging and the other in production).

If you instruct Dynatrace to merge two separate process groups into a single process group, this will result in the services running on those processes to also be merged.

Customize process groups

To serve your particular needs when monitoring your processes, Dynatrace allows you to:

  • Customize the name of process groups.
  • Adapt the composition of default process groups.
  • Create new process groups in cases where the technology of processes isn't recognized by Dynatrace.

Basic concepts

  • Which are the most important processes?
  • What technologies underlie individual processes?

Configuration

  • Process group naming
  • Process deep monitoring
  • Process group detection
  • Cloud application and workload detection
  • Define your own process group metadata
  • Custom process group detection rules (deprecated)

Monitoring

  • Overview of all technologies running in your environment
  • Analyze processes
  • Analyze process responsiveness
  • Process group availability monitoring and alerting
  • Monitor process-specific network connections
  • To examine the most resource-consuming processes running on your host, see Process instance snapshots.
  • To monitor the availability of key processes on your hosts, see Process availability.