What do the 'Unexpected services' in Dynatrace usually indicate?

'Unexpected services' in Dynatrace typically indicate services that have undetermined relationships because they are missing identifiers. In the context of monitoring and observability, each service is expected to have a clear relationship with other services in the architecture, often established through metadata such as identifiers or tags. When these identifiers are missing or cannot be correctly associated with a service, Dynatrace flags them as unexpected.

This situation can arise in various scenarios, such as when new services are introduced without the appropriate configuration, or when there are changes to the service topology that haven’t been updated in the monitoring setup. The identification of unexpected services helps teams investigate potential issues in their microservices architecture or in their monitoring setup, ensuring that every service is correctly represented in the observability platform. By addressing these unexpected services, teams can gain fuller visibility into their environments and resolve potential operational issues that arise from misconfigurations.