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Dynatrace Review

The technical capabilities are strong and ease of use for technical drill downs is exceptionally good.

We recently upgraded to Compuware APM v12 (dynaTrace RUM) from APM v11.x. The product was fairly straight forward to set up and once you have it running in an operational environment there is very little administration needed.

The real-user-monitoring (RUM) technology is very mature, easy to use, and integrates easily with the rest of the APM suite. The new APM v12 portal concept is outstanding, allowing 100% customization for the executive dashboard. The new methods for portlet design (i.e. publish and subscribe) are easy to learn, and you will be configuring some very useful dashboards by the end of the first day.

The one caveat when configuring new portlet subscriptions is that there is a soft memory leak on the client side when using Internet Explorer, so we use Firefox for configuration changes. It’s my understanding that this will be addressed in APM v12.1 released early 2013.

Upgrade Approach
Since our SLA reporting metrics are done with another tool there was no need for a database conversion. This allowed us to build the new environment and run it in parallel with the old, and then cut over once we had all of the traffic configured. For our existing Data Mining Interface (DMI) custom reports we used the export/import (XML file) feature which worked just fine.

3rd Party Integration
The new architecture is moving away from Vantage View being the point of integration for sending alarms so we configured the Central Analysis Server (CAS) for 3rd party integration via SNMP traps. One item to be aware of is that any new alarm definition created on the CAS will create a new MIB file that must be loaded on your SNMP trap receiver.

Existing User Transition
For existing dynaTrace RUM users Compuware has provided all of the old APM v11.x reporting capabilities under the “deprecated reports” tab within the Data Mining Interface (DMI). This is very helpful for the support teams in making the transition to the new APM v12 GUI.

Conclusion
The capabilities of the Real-user-monitoring (RUM) technology and ease of use for technical drill downs is exceptionally good. I’m very pleased with the attention that Compuware gives their customers and the support process. Their technical team is very knowledgeable and works to resolve issues quickly. I would add Compuware APM v12 (dynaTrace RUM) to any short list for evaluation.

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Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.

Jan 04 2013

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3 Comments

President with 51-200 employees

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Hi Larry, with this drill down capability, on average, how long it takes for your team members to identify the root cause of the performance problem ? Also Is DCRUM used by different application performance stakeholders?

04 May 15

Coordinador Técnico del área de Monitorización y Automatización at a tech services company with 1,001-5,000 employees

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Hi Larry, I wanna know if you've used another different APM solution before you got Dynatrace and why you changed it

10 May 15

Randall Hinds

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Hi Folks, We utilize DCRUM at my company - going back to 2006 (then branded as Adlex). I can attest to all points Larry made, except porlet subscription leak in IE - never idenitfied in our implementations. A couple quick updates you may already be aware of: Compuware split/spun off Dynatrace as a separate company after being acquired by a private equity company, DCRUM is a part of the Dynatrace offering but can stand-alone, and DCRUM v12.3 has rolled in a set of capabilities Compuware once branded as Vantage Network Analysis which analyzes all traffic at the connection/session level (TCP layer3) providing auto-discovery of traffic, protocols and NW performance from an app perspective.

The DMI is a powerful interface allowing reports to be built on any/all packet & tranaction analysis, and the new templates & web/mobile UI which can layer on top of DMI reports make the data very accessible to any/all audiences.
Drill downs to probable RC can be as quick as mere minutes, but there are mountains of data being captured for analysis. Without a good breadcrumb trail it can take days of sorting and sifting to find vital clues on RC. It should be stated as well, DCRUM is looking for transcations/operations and decrypting to the payload (TCP layer7) but does not look into app engines (JVMs/.NET) at thread & method level calls. You need the APM agent to deepdive into the app code performance itself.

We have used several APM products at my company (CA APM, IBM ITCAM, etc) and we have tested a several others. Dynatrace APM is our current standard and was selected for many reasons - capability, financial fit, and vendor support being the top priorities in our scoring. Other APM products have lacked in one or more those areas.

I would also recommend the Guardian Service offered by Dynatrace. The company will assign an onsite resource that is completely focused on your implementation - challenges & new project work, and the ROI is well worth the spend in our experience.
Hope this is helpful - Cheers!

31 July 15

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