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Key Takeaways
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With application synthetic monitoring capabilities, DX Operational Observability (DX O2) can monitor websites and other services by probing the target from various globally distributed monitoring stations. These capabilities, which support SaaS and on-premises deployments, help teams shift from reactive to proactive management, elevate user experience for monitoring, and raise observability to a new level.
Previously, with DX Application Performance Manager and DX Operational Intelligence, integrating ASM metrics was achieved through an extension of the Application Performance Management Infrastructure Agent (APMIA).
Now, with DX O2, the integration can be done natively through the product’s user interface. The Preferences menu appears in the top-right menu, under the logged in user name.
Only two variables are needed: Ingestion URL and Agent Token. To get these variables, log into the DX O2 that you want to enable for synthetics.
1. The NASS endpoint URL (Ingestion URL). You will find this value in DX O2 under "Settings" => Access Tokens/Security => Connector Parameters".
In the Connection Parameters section, the NASS URL is identified as the Ingestion URL.
2. The Agent Token (authentication and identification). To create the Agent Token required by DX O2, go to "Settings" => Access Tokens/Security => Agent Tokens". Paste this into the "Tenant Agent Token" field in the DX ASM preferences configuration.
After you enter and save the configured setting, you will see the "Synthetic" root entry displayed in the Metric Tree. This may take a few minutes.
Operators will now be able to configure alerts and trigger levels as they do for regular applications in DX O2.
Operators can also create dashboards to show the current operations of the Synthetic Monitor. Dashboards for synthetics can display metrics such as Connection Time (ms), DNS Resolution Time (ms), Download Size (bytes), Download Time (ms), Duration (ms), Performance Bad, Performance Good, Probes, and more.
To help operators get started, DX O2 includes pre-built dashboards that include these metrics. See a sample dashboard and its description below.
In conclusion, integrating synthetics with DX O2 provides the ability to monitor both the user experience and the application’s health in a more comprehensive and effective manner. This combination enables proactive identification of issues so they may be resolved before they affect production. Ultimately, this leads to enhanced application reliability and better user experiences.
The sample dashboard below includes all reported synthetic metrics. The dashboard includes:
- Current reported request times compared to configured targets.
- Current availability of configured monitors, displayed as heat maps.
- Information on reported monitoring metrics, displayed as graphs.
- Monitoring filter(s) applied, displayed in the top row.
Note: For SaaS customers, contact support for assistance to enable native synthetics integration for your tenant.
For additional details, visit the Frequently Asked Questions page here.
Jörg Mertin
Jörg Mertin, a Master Solution Engineer on the AIOps and Observability team, is a self-learner and technology enthusiast. A testament to this is his early adopter work to learn and evangelize Linux in the early 1990s. Whether addressing coordinating monitoring approaches for full-fledged cloud deployments or a...
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