Send Micrometer metrics to Dynatrace

Micrometer is an open source instrumentation framework for JVM-based application metrics. It's used by Spring Boot to instrument a wide range of metrics. You can ingest Micrometer and Spring Boot metrics and analyze them with Dynatrace Davis® AI end to end in the context of your trace, log, and diagnostics data. With Dynatrace, you get intelligent AI-based observability and automatic root cause analysis for Spring Boot, 15+ pre-instrumented JVM-based frameworks and servers, and custom metrics.

You can use Micrometer in Dynatrace to:

There are two ways of using Micrometer:

Prerequisites

Ingestion channels

You can use one of the following ingestion channels to send your Micrometer metrics:

Dynatrace Micrometer registry

Micrometer uses the concept of a registry to export metrics to monitoring systems.

Ingest metrics from Spring Boot apps

Micrometer can be configured via a .properties or .yaml file used for Spring Boot configuration. Spring Boot automatically binds properties with the management.dynatrace.metrics.export prefix to the Dynatrace configuration object.

Ingest metrics directly from Micrometer

Verify the metrics

After you have sent your metrics, verify the data in the Data Explorer.

Configuration properties

To set up the Dynatrace Micrometer registry, you need the Dynatrace configuration object (DynatraceConfig). The object contains the parameters of metric ingestion and is used to construct the Dynatrace registry (DynatraceMeterRegistry), which is registered with Micrometer to ingest metrics to Dynatrace. You can set the following parameters:

Additional information

Metric types

All metrics are transformed to follow the Metric ingestion protocol types used by Dynatrace.

Meter metadata

Starting with version 1.12.0 of the Dynatrace Micrometer registry, meter metadata (unit and description) is automatically exported to Dynatrace. No code changes are required to start exporting metadata. To turn off metadata export, use the following configuration:

For previous versions of Micrometer, you need to specify the metadata manually using either the Dynatrace web UI or Dynatrace API. For more information, see Custom metric metadata.

Capture JVM metrics in Micrometer

By default, JVM metrics are turned off when running Micrometer without Spring Boot. To learn how to enable them, see the Micrometer documentation. After they are enabled and registered with the Dynatrace registry (DynatraceMeterRegistry), JVM metrics are created and sent to Dynatrace automatically.

On hosts that are monitored by OneAgent, these metrics might already be captured by OneAgent.

Restrict ingestion of specific metrics

Troubleshooting with logs

Dynatrace summary instruments

Starting with Micrometer version 1.9.x, specialized instruments are used in the Dynatrace meter registry for certain summary instruments (DynatraceTimer and DynatraceDistributionSummary). Their purpose is to get around a peculiarity in how Micrometer records metrics, which, in some cases, led to metrics being rejected by Dynatrace for having an invalid format. The specialized instruments, tailored to Dynatrace metrics ingestion, prevent the creation of invalid metrics.

Dynatrace Micrometer registry v1 (legacy)

If the apiVersion property is set to V1, the registry sends data via the Timeseries API v1. For backward compatibility, it defaults to V1 if a deviceId is specified, because this property is required in V1 and is not used in V2.

Existing setups will continue to work when updating to newer versions of Micrometer. The reported metrics will be assigned to custom devices in Dynatrace.

For the V1 API, you only need to specify the base URL of your environment (for example, https://mySampleEnv.live.dynatrace.com).

management.dynatrace.metrics.export:
    # For v1 export, do not append a path to the endpoint URL. For example:
    # For SaaS: https://{your-environment-id}.live.dynatrace.com
    # For Managed deployments: https://{your-domain}/e/{your-environment-id}
    uri: https://{your-environment-id}.live.dynatrace.com

    # Should be read from a secure source
    api-token: MY_TOKEN

    # When setting the device id, metrics will be exported to the v1 timeseries endpoint
    # Using just device-id (without the v1 prefix) is deprecated, but will work to maintain backwards compatibility.
    v1:
        device-id: sample

    # To disable Dynatrace publishing (for example, in a local development profile), use:
    # enabled: false

    # The interval at which metrics are sent to Dynatrace. The default is 1 minute.
    step: 1m

DynatraceConfig dynatraceConfig = new DynatraceConfig() {
    @Override
    public String uri() {
        // The Dynatrace environment URI without any path. For example:
        // https://{your-environment-id}.live.dynatrace.com
        return MY_DYNATRACE_URI;
    }

    @Override
    public String apiToken() {
        // Should be read from a secure source
        return MY_TOKEN;
    }

    @Override
    public String deviceId() {
        return MY_DEVICE_ID;
    }

    @Override
    @Nullable
    public String get(String k) {
        return null;
    }
};
DynatraceMeterRegistry registry = DynatraceMeterRegistry.builder(config).build();
// Add the Dynatrace registry to Micrometers global registry.
Metrics.addRegistry(registry);