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2. Getting started

Requirements

  • A Grail enabled Dynatrace SaaS Tenant (sign up here).
  • A GitHub account to interact with the demo repository.

1. Dynatrace Tenant Setup#

You will need a Dynatrace SaaS tenant with a DPS pricing model and the 'Code Monitoring' rate card should be associated with it. In addition the application needs to be monitored with Dynatrace FullStack mode. The application runtime: Java, NodeJS.

1.1 Enable Observability for Developers#

  • Go to Settings > General monitoring settings > OneAgent features.
    • Enable the Java Live-Debugger, Node.js Live-Debugger, or both, depending on your needs.
  • Go to Settings > Observability for Developers > Enable Observability for Developers

More information can be found here

1.2 Set IAM Policies#

We take security very seriously. So let's create a policy to set user-level Live Debugging breakpoints.

We need two policies for your user to be able to set breakpoints and to read snapshots. For this we go to Account Management > Identity & Access management > + Policy

Set breakpoints 

ALLOW dev-obs:breakpoints:set;
Read Snapshopts 
ALLOW storage:application.snapshots:read;
ALLOW storage:buckets:read WHERE storage:table-name = "application.snapshots";

For managing snapshots, setting for Admins. 

ALLOW dev-obs:breakpoints:manage;

The policy should look something like this:

DevOps Policy

More info here about the IAM Policies here Then we bind it to a user group. In this case since we are admins, let's bind the policy to the Admin group. Notice that the created policy is for an Admin and also for a Developer. Since we allow to read and set breakpoints but also to manage breakpoints which is explained here.

Go to Group Management > Select Admin Group > + Permission (and bind the policy) Bind Group

Like this you have the fine control to give your developers, SRE teams and whoever you want to set breakpoints and read the snapshots. For more granular access please continue reading here

1.3 Enable Live Debugger ActiveGate module#

Now we need to enable the Live Debugger ActiveGate module:

#Set debugging_enabled to true in the custom.properties file.
activeGate:
    customProperties:
      value: |
        [debugging]
        debugging_enabled = true
This is already set up for you in the codespaces automatically in the Dynakube.yaml file so no need to restart the ActiveGate.

1.4 Enable Log Ingest#

You have (2) options:

  • Enable built-in log ingest rule to ingest all logs discovered by Dynatrace
  • Configure log ingest rule to ingest relevant logs for this lab

In your Dynatrace tenant, open the Settings App. Navigate in the menus to Collect and capture > Log monitoring > Log ingest rules. This will open the Settings Classic App and show you the Log ingest rules

Settings Log Ingest Rules

Ingest all logs

Locate the rule [Built-in] Ingest all logs and enable it. Click Save changes.

Ingest relevant logs

Settings Log Ingest Todoapp

Click on Add rule to create a new Rule. Configure the Rule:

Rule name: 

TODO App Logs

Rule type: 

Include in storage

Conditions: 

Kubernetes namespace name = todoapp

Click on Save changes.

2. Create Dynatrace API Tokens for Kubernetes Observability#

This codespace has everything automated for you so you can focus on what matters which in this enablement is to learn about the Live Debugging capabilities of the Dynatrace Platform. You'll need two tokens:

  1. Operator Token
  2. Ingest Token

We will get this two very easy from the Kubernetes App.

2.1. Get the Operator Token and the Ingest Token from the Kubernetes App#

  1. Open the Kubernetes App (CTRL + K then type Kubernetes for fast access)
  2. Select the + Add cluster button
  3. Scroll down to the section Install Dynatrace Operator
  4. Click on generate Token for the 'Dynatrace Operator' and save it to your Notepad
  5. Click on generate Token for the 'Data Ingest Token' and save it to your Notepad
  6. You can close the Kubernetes App, we don't need it, we just needed the tokens.

Kubernetes Tokens

Let's launch the Codespace

Now we are ready to launch the Codespace! You'll need your tenant and the two tokens previuosly gathered from above. When you enter the tenant please enter it without the 'apps' part, for production tenants eg. abc123 for live -> https://abc123.live.dynatrace.com and for sprint -> https://abc123.sprint.dynatracelabs.com no apps in the URL.