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Release: Australia · Updated: 2026-03-12 · Official documentation · View source

Observability vendor entity mappings for Service Observability

Understand how Service Observability maps service, host, and database entities to your observability vendor resources.

Service Observability displays metrics from your observability vendor for services, hosts, databases, and network components on the Observability dashboards based on the key:value pairs in the mapping rules you create during configuration. Service Observability sends a request to the observability vendor using that mapping as a filter to find related entities. Any additional filtering needed to find the entities is noted in the following sections.

Amazon CloudWatch entity mapping

Resources are returned using the AWS GetResources API.

Service Observability entity categoryService Observability entity dashboardAWS resource
ApplicationAPI Gateway - HTTPAPI Gateway HTTP APIs
 API Gateway - RESTAPI Gateway REST APIs
 ELBELB application load balancers
 LambdaLambda functions
ComputeHostEC2 instances
DatabasesRDSRDS database instances

AppDynamics entity mapping

Resources are returned using the value of the entityName property.

Service Observability entity categoryService Observability entity dashboardAppDynamics resource
ApplicationServiceAppDynamics applications returned by the /controller/rest/applications/ API
ComputeHostServer nodes for applications returned by the /controller/sim/v2/user/machines/keys/ API
DatabasesMySQLMySQL database instances returned by the /controller/rest/databases/collectors/
 PostgreSQLMySQL database instances returned by the /controller/rest/databases/collectors/

Azure entity mapping

Resources are returned using the Azure ResourceGraph API.

Service Observability entity categoryService Observability entity dashboardAzure resource
ApplicationService- `Microsoft.Compute/cloudServices` - `Microsoft.Web/sites`
ComputeHost`Microsoft.Compute/virtualMachines`
DatabasesMySQL- `Microsoft.DBforMySQL/servers` - `Microsoft.DBforMySQL/flexibleServers`
 PostgreSQL- `Microsoft.DBforPostgreSQL/servers` - `Microsoft.DBforPostgreSQL/flexibleServers`

Datadog entity mapping

Service Observability entity categoryService Observability entity dashboardDatadog resource
ApplicationServiceEntities returned from the Software Catalog: List Entities API
ComputeHostHosts returned from the Hosts: List Hosts API
DatabasesMySQLDatabases returned by filtering the mysql.net.max_connections metric, filtered by the provided key:value pair in the data mapping.Note: If your databases don't emit this metric, they aren't mapped.
 PostgreSQLDatabases returned by filtering the postgresql.connections metric, filtered by the provided key:value pair in the data mapping.Note: If your databases don't emit this metric, they aren't mapped.

Items of note:

  • Service entities: The Software Catalog list entities API only returns data for services that include metadata. If you want to map services that don't include metadata, you must create a mapping using service as the tag and the name of the service as the value.

    For example, say you have a service named internet-banking-4 that you want to use in a mapping and it doesn't contain metadata. You set up the mapping as shown in this screenshot.

Image omitted: so\_dd\_mapping.png
How to map a service that doesn't contain metadata
  • Default dashboard templates: The Requests, Errors, and Latency charts on the Overview and Observability dashboard templates are created using the Datadog trace.http.request trace metric. If a service isn't emitting that metric, no data is found. You can customize the template to use a different trace metric query. See Customize Service Observability dashboard templates for more information.

Dynatrace entity mapping

You can use either the Dynatrace Classic query or Grail (DQL) query, however both require separate data connections. For Grail queries, Service Observability first queries the Grail data source and if not found, will fall back to a Classic query.

Service Observability entity categoryService Observability entity dashboardDynatrace resource
ApplicationServiceServices
ComputeHostHosts
DatabasesMySQLMySQL database instances
 PostgreSQLPostgreSQL database instances

LogicMonitor entity mapping

Resources are returned using the Get Devices API, using specific property values on the entities as a filter.

Service Observability entity categoryService Observability entity dashboardLogicMonitor resource
ApplicationServiceEntities with the predef.externalResourceType auto property set to Service
ComputeHostEntities with the predef.externalResourceType auto property set to PhysicalServer, Container, or VirtualMachine
DatabasesMySQLEntities with the system.categories custom property set to MySQL
 PostgreSQLEntities with the system.categories custom property set to PostgreSQL

New Relic entity mapping

Service Observability entity categoryService Observability entity dashboardNew Relic resource
ApplicationServiceApplication services
ComputeHostHosts
DatabasesMySQLMySQL database instances
 PostgreSQLPostgreSQL database instances

Prometheus entity mapping

Service Observability entity categoryService Observability entity dashboardPrometheus resource
ApplicationServiceApplications
ComputeHostServer nodes for applications
DatabasesMySQLMySQL database instances
 PostgreSQLPostgreSQL database instances

SolarWinds entity mapping

Service Observability entity categoryService Observability entity dashboardSolarWinds resource
ApplicationServiceApplication services
ComputeHostHosts
NetworkingFirewallBy default, data mappings find and display metrics using Palo Alto Firewall keys.If you want metrics from a different firewall, follow the instructions for customizing dashboard templates.
 Load BalancerBy default, data mappings find and display metrics using F5 Big-IP Load Balancer keys.If you want metrics from a different load balancer, follow the instructions for customizing dashboard templates.
 InterfaceNetwork interfaces
 Other Network DevicesOther network devices, such as switches and routers

Items to note:

  • You can use custom properties for key/value pairs in a data mapping.
  • If you are using SolarWinds as an exception in your mapping to ingest networking metrics, using custom properties is optional. If you do use them, only entities with those properties in their metadata are returned. If you leave the tag and key values blank, all supported entities are returned.

Splunk entity mapping

Resources are returned using the Splunk Metric time series Metadata API. Service Observability searches for matching key:value pairs in custom properties and then falls back to searching dimensions.

The returned payload is then filtered by the presence of a specific metric in the metadata that corresponds with an entity type.

Service Observability entity categoryService Observability entity dashboardSplunk Property or dimensionSplunk metric used for filtering
ApplicationService- Property: `sf_service` - Dimension fallback: `service.name``sf_metric:service.request`
ComputeHost- Property: `host.name` - Dimension fallback: `host.id``sf_metric:disk.summary_utilization`
DatabasesMySQL- Property: `mysql.instance.name` - Dimension fallback: `mysql.instance.endpoint``sf_metric:mysql.threads`
 PostgreSQLNot supported 

Zabbix entity mapping

In Zabbix, every monitored entity is categorized as a host. To enable differentiation between entities, Service Observability searches for keywords in attributes on metadata tags, including host tags, inherited tags, templates, and host groups. Any Zabbix host that does not match a keyword are classified and displayed as Host entities.

The following table shows the keywords used to find distinct entities. Keywords are case insensitive.

Service Observability entity categoryService Observability entity dashboardMetadata keyword
ApplicationService- Apache - nginx - Kubernetes - cluster - application
ComputeHostAny non-matching keyword
DatabasesMySQL- Mysql - Msql - mariadb
 PostgreSQL- Postgres - Psql - Pgsql - Postgresql
NetworkingFirewall- Firewall - palo-alto - palo alto - pan - fortigate - fortinet - fgt - sophos - sonicwall - watchguard - zscaler By default, data mappings find and display metrics using Palo Alto Firewall keys.If you want metrics from a different firewall, follow the instructions for customizing dashboard templates.
 Load Balancer- Loadbalancer - load\_balancer - alb - nlb - f5 - netscaler - big-ip - bigip By default, data mappings find and display metrics using F5 Big-IP Load Balancer keys.If you want metrics from a different load balancer, follow the instructions for customizing dashboard templates.
 Other Network devices- Network - router - rt - gateway - gw - juniper - junos - switch - catalyst - nexus - arista
   

Item to note:

The default dashboards for each entity type display metrics using Zabbix standard keys. If your implementation uses custom item keys, you need to customize your dashboard templates accordingly.

Parent Topic:Service Observability reference