Avoid billing surprises with smart Dynatrace cost monitors

The Dynatrace Platform Subscription model transformed how we deliver the value of the Dynatrace platform to our customers, providing seamless access to all platform capabilities in any quantity. Now we’ve introduced cost monitors to assist you in managing your Dynatrace budget and making the most of full platform access. Cost monitors notify you of any notable shifts in your daily and projected costs during your subscription.

Managing a Dynatrace Platform Subscription (DPS) budget requires balancing your organization’s usage of Dynatrace capabilities against a pre-defined annual budget commitment. Without adequate flexibility in the subscription model, your organization might fail to benefit from capabilities that could transform your observability and security processes. Conversely, with too much flexibility, costs may exceed your budget.

Subscription administrators typically limit team access and capability usage to avoid billing surprises. This approach is time-consuming and requires ongoing management. Also, if limits are set too low, some critical components in your infrastructure might go unmonitored, potentially negatively impacting your business. While if limits are set too high, you might pay for more monitoring than you need and exceed your budget. While there is no penalty for exceeding your DPS budget (the same rate card is applied for on-demand usage without additional fees or premium pricing), administrators need the ability to manage their subscriptions within a planned budget.

Cost monitors notify you of changes to your forecast usage

Cost monitors offer a different approach to these challenges. By using predictive AI with smart forecast algorithms that predict usage, you’re notified whenever forecasted usage is projected to exceed your defined budget or when unexpected usage spikes occur.

Cost monitors run in the background daily, automatically monitoring usage forecasts and costs. They notify you when unusual forecasts and cost events occur so you can focus on monitoring your applications, not your subscription. Cost monitors automatically notify subscription administrators without manual setup or configuration. However, you retain full control over configured thresholds and notification paths if you desire to change them. They even provide APIs so you can integrate them into your monitoring ecosystem as needed.

Smart forecasting capabilities

Cost monitors leverage the smart forecasting capabilities of the Dynatrace Platform Subscription to predict your costs through the end of your subscription period. The budget summary includes a median forecast value with an upper and lower range for each day of your subscription into the future. By monitoring the forecast cost for the end of your subscription, you can proactively plan for growth and be notified of spikes in usage to stay on top of daily spending. Usage is forecast daily and you’re notified of significant changes or forecasts that exceed your defined threshold values. This allows you to plan and make changes accordingly.

Cost monitors also track daily costs at the capability and environment levels, alerting you when daily costs exceed predicted levels. There are no thresholds to manage for cost events; cost monitors are designed to ensure that all meaningful increases are caught and notified without generating false alerts. This predictive AI technique allows you to stay on top of daily costs and be notified of unexpected cost increases.

Cost monitors also generate email notifications for specified recipients when forecast and cost events occur. By default, you are notified of all forecast and cost events. License administrators can additionally define a specific email distribution list for these notifications. This approach ensures that a responsible team member is notified about all subscription-relevant events without any upfront configuration. Proactive alerting can be used to draw attention to unusual usage in non-production environments or an unexpected increase in use for a specific capability, allowing you to plan or manage accordingly.

What’s next

Dynatrace will continue to monitor and fine-tune the cost-event detection algorithms used by cost monitors to ensure that notifications are accurate.

If you’re already using the new Dynatrace Platform Subscription model (available as of April 26, 2023), cost monitors are already running on your account! For full details on how to get the most from them, please see our Cost monitor documentation.

Additional information about the Dynatrace Platform Subscription model is also available in our DPS documentation. If you’re interested in migrating to a Dynatrace Platform Subscription, please contact a Dynatrace account representative.