Monitoring Datadog (private preview)

With Instana, you can monitor the Datadog platform, which monitors your IT infrastructure. For more information about the Datadog product, see the Datadog documentation.

After you install the Instana host agent, the Instana Datadog sensor is automatically installed. You can view the Datadog monitored hosts and their associated metrics in the Instana UI after you configure the sensor. For more information about the configuration of the sensor, see Configuring the Datadog sensor.

Supported information

Supported operating systems

The supported operating systems of the Datadog sensor are consistent with host agents requirements, which can be checked in the Supported operating systems section of each host agent, such as Supported operating systems for Unix.

Configuring the Datadog sensor

You must configure the Datadog sensor with the endpoint and API keys for the Datadog instance that you want to connect to. The following code snippet shows the fields that you must configure in the agent configuration file <agent_install_dir>/etc/instana/configuration.yaml:

com.instana.plugin.datadog:
  enabled: true             
  endpoint: 'https://api.datadoghq.com' 
  api_key: 'redacted'
  application_key: 'redacted'
  poll_rate: 30

The following table contains the supported configuration options:

Name Type Required Default Description
enabled boolean Yes false The variable that controls whether the sensor is enabled or not.
endpoint string Yes NA The endpoint of the Datadog server API.
api_key string Yes NA The API key that is used to connect to the Datadog server.
application_key string Yes NA The application key that is used to connect to the Datadog server.
poll_rate integer No 30 The number of seconds between metric queries. This time might need adjustment to account for any rate limits imposed by your endpoint.
target_zone string No NA The name of the generic zone where your Datadog monitored hosts are displayed on the Instana Infrastructure map. If not specified, hosts are displayed in Undefined Zone.

Datadog endpoint

The Instana Datadog sensor uses the Datadog API to collect information about the hosts that Datadog is monitoring. The Datadog API endpoint is required to communicate with Datadog. Typically, the endpoint is https://api.datadoghq.com, but if for some reason you must connect to a different address, you can change it in the configuration.yaml file.

Datadog API keys

Two API keys are required to authenticate with the Datadog API. For more information about how to create the API key and application key, see the Datadog documentation.

When you create your application key, be sure that it contains the following scopes:

  • events_read
  • metrics_read
  • timeseries_query

Viewing metrics

To view the metrics, complete the following steps:

  1. From the navigation menu in the Instana UI, select Infrastructure.
  2. Click a specific monitored host.

Then, you can see a remote host dashboard with all the collected metrics.

Configuration data

  • OS (name, version, architecture, and distribution)
  • CPU (count and type)
  • Total Memory
  • Hostname and FQDN
  • Filesystem Capacity

Performance metrics

  • CPU Usage %
  • CPU Load
  • Memory Usage
  • Swap Used (Linux only)
  • Filesystem Used and Inode usage
  • Network RX and TX Bytes

Viewing events

Datadog events are one shot events, which do not have a duration. Each event has a severity of error, warning, or info. These events are imported into Instana as Issues (error and warning) or Changes (info), depending on their severity.

To view the events, complete the following steps:

  1. From the navigation menu in the Instana UI, select Events.
  2. To filter events of a specific type, select Changes or Issues.
  3. To filter events that are imported from Datadog, enter the following query in the search box: entity.remote.host.source:Datadog

Then, you can see a list of the events that were imported from Datadog.

Troubleshooting

Agent monitoring issues

If the Datadog sensor cannot communicate with the Datadog API server, an agent monitoring issue is created. The issue describes which configuration parameter might be incorrect. For example, if the sensor receives an HTTP 401 or 403 error from the Datadog server, the API key or application key might be incorrect or expired. The following configuration parameters can lead to agent monitoring issues:

  • endpoint
  • api_key or application_key (HTTP 401 or 403)
  • poll_rate (HTTP 429)

Agent OutOfMemoryError

If you are connected to a Datadog server that is monitoring many hosts, the JVM heap size of the Instana agent might need to be increased. If you find OutOfMemoryError in the agent log, consider increasing the Instana agent's maximum heap size. For more information, see the JAVA_OPTS environment variable in the Environment variable reference.