NAM Monitor

Dynatrace’s Network Availability Monitoring (NAM) enables you to track the availability of hosts, devices, and services across your network. With NAM monitors, you can ensure that critical components of your network infrastructure are performing as expected, and quickly identify issues that may arise.

There are three types of NAM monitors you can create: ICMP, TCP, and DNS. Each of these monitors serves a specific purpose to check the network availability and performance of your services.

Network Availability Monitoring on Dynatrace Managed

NAM Setup: How It Works

NAM monitors are designed to support more than one step within the monitor setup. Each step can contain multiple requests, and they are executed sequentially. However, within a single step, multiple requests can run in parallel, ensuring that the failure of one request doesn’t affect others.

For instance, you might monitor a group of four hosts using ICMP checks. You can either create separate tests for each host or combine them into a single test with multiple requests. The latter method makes it easier to manage and configure, as you only need to update a single set of parameters, like frequency or location.

Creating a NAM Monitor in Dynatrace

To create a NAM monitor, follow these steps:

  1. Navigate to Synthetic Monitoring: Go to the Synthetic (new) section in Dynatrace and select Create monitor.
  2. Select Monitor Type: Choose Network monitor (NAM) from the available options.
  3. Configure General Settings:
    • Name: Enter the name for the monitor (up to 500 characters).
    • Protocol: Select the protocol (DNS, ICMP, or TCP).
    • Description: Optionally, provide a description for your monitor.
    • Tags: Optionally, add tags to classify the monitor.
  4. Configure Requests:
    • You can choose between Visual mode or Script mode for setting up requests.
    • Define each request’s name, targets, execution attributes, and constraints.
    • For ICMP, execution attributes might include timeouts, number of packets, data length, and time-to-live values.
  5. Set Frequency and Locations:
    • Choose the frequency of execution (e.g., every 1 minute, 5 minutes, or 1 hour).
    • Select one or more locations to run the monitor from.
  6. Configure Outage Handling:
    • Optionally enable settings for generating alerts when the monitor is unavailable at all locations or only at specific locations.
  7. Review Summary and Save:
    • After reviewing your settings, click Save to create the NAM monitor

Additional Settings and Customizations.

  • Performance Thresholds: You can define performance thresholds for your requests, including RTT for ICMP, connection times for TCP, and resolution times for DNS. Violations of these thresholds will trigger alerts and problems.
  • Target Filters: Use target filters to dynamically adjust your monitored hosts based on tags, host groups, or IP ranges. This is useful if the structure of your network changes.
  • Outage Reporting: NAM monitors can also track outages, including the number of affected locations and total downtime. You can configure alerts based on the monitor’s availability and performance.

Useful Links

FAQ

You can create ICMP, TCP, and DNS monitors to check the availability of your network hosts, services, and devices.

Yes, you can define a single test with multiple requests. This allows you to monitor multiple hosts or devices within one step, improving maintenance efficiency.

If one request fails, it does not affect the execution of the other requests within the same step. This ensures that multiple hosts can be monitored simultaneously without interfering with each other.

Performance threshold violations occur when your network service does not meet the defined criteria, such as slow DNS resolution or TCP connection time. Violations trigger a Problem (Slowdown) and can send alerts for immediate action.

Filters allow you to dynamically adjust the targets of your NAM tests, ensuring that you monitor only the relevant hosts, services, or devices based on specific criteria.