This post will cover how to use the Dynatrace releases functionality…
Assumptions
- You have a Dynatrace environment available
- You have a host (or Kubernetes cluster) with a OneAgent already installed
Dynatrace Release Tracking
Using the Dynatrace release functionality is extremely easy. The method differs slightly whether you’re using a VM based deployment for your application or Kubernetes.
Fundamentally though, there are three things you must set:
- The product eg.
frontend - The stage eg.
dev - The version eg.
v0.0.1
Kubernetes Method
For Kubernetes, simply add Kubernetes labels to your pods:
app.kubernetes.io/part-of
app.kubernetes.io/version
The product value is taken from the app.kubernetes.io/part-of label. The version is taken from the app.kubernetes.io/version label and the stage is taken from either the namespace or the Dynatrace host group (if set).
That’s all there is to it & you’ll see releases begin to appear when new deployments are pushed.
VM Method
Assuming you have a process on a VM, make the following environment variables available to the process during startup.
export DT_RELEASE_PRODUCT=<PRODUCT-NAME>
export DT_RELEASE_STAGE=<STAGE-NAME>
export DT_RELEASE_VERSION=<VERSION-NUMBER>
For example, to track apache httpd releases we add these variables to /etc/apache2/envvars and restart apache2:
echo 'export DT_RELEASE_VERSION=v0.1' | sudo tee -a /etc/apache2/envvars
echo 'export DT_RELEASE_STAGE=dev' | sudo tee -a /etc/apache2/envvars
echo 'export DT_RELEASE_PRODUCT=frontend' | sudo tee -a /etc/apache2/envvars
sudo service apache2 restart
Summary
This is a relatively new feature in Dynatrace but is so easy to do, I now consider it a best practice.