Dt Obs Problems

Problem Analysis Skill

Analyze Dynatrace AI-detected problems including root cause identification, impact assessment, and correlation with logs and metrics.

Use Cases

1. Active Problem Triage

• Goal: List and prioritize currently active problems
• Trigger: "active problems", "what problems are open", "current issues", "availability issues"
• Done: Prioritized list of active problems with category, user impact, and display IDs

2. Root Cause Investigation

• Goal: Identify the root cause entity for a specific problem
• Trigger: "root cause of P-12345", "what caused this problem", "which entity is the root cause"
• Done: Root cause entity identified with affected entity list and blast radius

3. Problem Trending

• Goal: Analyze problem patterns over time to identify recurring issues
• Trigger: "recurring problems", "problem history", "problem trends last 30 days"
• Done: Trend data showing problem frequency, recurring root causes, and resolution times

Overview

Dynatrace automatically detects anomalies, performance degradations, and failures across your environment, creating problems that aggregate related alert, warning and info-level events and provide root cause and impact insights.

What are Problems?

Problems are automatically detected, software and infrastructure health and resilience issues that:

• Automatically correlate related alert, warning, and info-level events across services, infrastructure, frontend applications, and user sessions
• Identify root causes using causal analysis of Smartscape dependencies
• Assess business impact by tracking affected users and services
• Reduce alert noise by grouping related symptoms into single problems that share the same root cause and impact
• Track problem lifecycle from early detection through resolution

Event Kinds

The event.kind field (stable, permission) identifies the high-level event type:

event.provider (stable, permission) identifies the event source.

Problem Categories

Common event.category values:

Problem Lifecycle

Detection → ACTIVE → Under Investigation → CLOSED

• ACTIVE: Currently occurring issues requiring attention
• CLOSED: Resolved issues used for historical analysis

Essential Fields

Common Field Name Mistakes

Correct Status Values

// ✅ CORRECT: Use these status values
fetch dt.davis.problems
| filter event.status == "ACTIVE"   // Currently occurring problems
//     or event.status == "CLOSED"  // Resolved problems
// ❌ INCORRECT: event.status == "OPEN" does not exist!
| limit 1

Key Fields Reference

fetch dt.davis.problems, from:now() - 1h
| filter not(dt.davis.is_duplicate)
| fields
    event.start,                          // Problem start timestamp
    event.end,                            // Problem end timestamp (if closed)
    display_id,                           // Human-readable problem ID (P-XXXXX)
    event.name,                           // Problem title
    event.description,                    // Detailed description
    event.category,                       // Problem type
    event.status,                         // ACTIVE or CLOSED
    dt.smartscape_source.id,              // The smartscape ID for the affected resource
    dt.davis.affected_users_count,        // Number of affected users
    affected_entity_ids = smartscape.affected_entities[][id],  // Array of affected entity IDs
    dt.smartscape.service,                // Affected services (may be array)
    dt.davis.root_cause_entity,           // Entity identified as root cause
    root_cause_entity_id,                 // Root cause entity ID
    root_cause_entity_name,               // Human-readable root cause name
    dt.davis.is_duplicate,                // Whether duplicate detection
    dt.davis.is_rootcause                 // Root cause vs. symptom
| limit 10

Standard Query Pattern

Always start problem queries with this foundation:

fetch dt.davis.problems, from:now() - 2h
| filter not(dt.davis.is_duplicate) and event.status == "ACTIVE"
| fields event.start, display_id, event.name, event.category
| sort event.start desc
| limit 20

Key components:

• fetch dt.davis.problems - The problems data source
• not(dt.davis.is_duplicate) - Filter out duplicate detections
• event.status == "ACTIVE" - Show only active problems
• Time range - Always specify a reasonable window

Common Query Patterns

Active Problems by Category

fetch dt.davis.problems
| filter not(dt.davis.is_duplicate) and event.status == "ACTIVE"
| summarize problem_count = count(), by: {event.category}
| sort problem_count desc

High-Impact Active Problems (affecting many users)

fetch dt.davis.problems
| filter not(dt.davis.is_duplicate) and event.status == "ACTIVE"
| filter dt.davis.affected_users_count > 100
| fields event.start, display_id, event.name, dt.davis.affected_users_count, event.category
| sort dt.davis.affected_users_count desc

High-Impact Active Problems (affecting many smartscape entities)

fetch dt.davis.problems
| filter not(dt.davis.is_duplicate) and event.status == "ACTIVE"
| filter arraySize(affected_entity_ids) > 5
| fields event.start, display_id, event.name, affected_entity_ids, event.category, impacted_entity_count = arraySize(affected_entity_ids)
| sort impacted_entity_count desc

Specific Problem Details

fetch dt.davis.problems
| filter display_id == "P-XXXXXXXXXX"
| fields event.start, event.end, event.name, event.description, affected_entity_ids, dt.davis.affected_users_count, root_cause_entity_id, root_cause_entity_name

Service-Specific Problem History

fetch dt.davis.problems, from:now() - 7d
| filter not(dt.davis.is_duplicate)
| filter in(dt.smartscape.service, toSmartscapeId("SERVICE-XXXXXXXXX"))
| summarize problems = count(), by: {event.category, event.status}

Root Cause Analysis Patterns

Basic Root Cause Query

fetch dt.davis.problems, from:now() - 24h
| filter not(dt.davis.is_duplicate) and event.status == "ACTIVE"
| fields
    display_id,
    event.name,
    event.description,
    root_cause_entity_id,
    root_cause_entity_name,
    affected_entity_ids = smartscape.affected_entities[][id]

Root Cause by Entity Type

Identify which entity types most frequently cause problems:

fetch dt.davis.problems, from:now() - 7d
| filter not(dt.davis.is_duplicate)
| filter isNotNull(root_cause_entity_id)
| summarize problem_count = count(), by:{root_cause_entity_name}
| sort problem_count desc
| limit 20

Affected entity is an AWS resource

fetch dt.davis.problems, from:now() - 24h