Datadog is a Software as a Service (SaaS) infrastructure and application monitoring platform that assists businesses in quickly identifying and fixing problems, ideally before such problems have an effect on end users. Because this solution connects with more than 200 widely used tools and services, it is incredibly simple to keep track of each component of your technology stack. In spite of Datadog’s widespread popularity as an infrastructure monitoring tool, the company only very recently introduced an integrated application performance monitoring package.
Despite the fact that Datadog is a relatively new firm, it has already seen widespread adoption not only among startups but also among large IT organizations due to its user-friendliness. Because companies that need a quick solution to monitor their technology stack but don’t want to spend the time to implement their own monitoring solution may find Datadog to be an appealing option. Getting started with Datadog requires minimal technical capabilities, and this is one reason why it is appealing.
Pros
• Simple to install, requiring only a basic understanding of relevant technology.
• Providing insight across your whole technology stack is made easier by more than 200 open-source connectors with prominent cloud services, databases, web servers, and other technologies.
• Dashboards that are not only aesthetically pleasing but also extremely modifiable.
• Through a comprehensive application programming interface (API), users are able to query their own custom metrics, events, and alarms.
• Automated notifications can be tailored to a user’s specific needs and distributed through a variety of communication channels and platforms, such as Slack and PagerDuty.
Cons
• There isn’t an app for mobile devices, but you can get alerts sent to your phone via text.
• Because it is only available in the cloud, this product is not suitable for businesses who need a solution that can be installed on their own premises (for example, due to compliance requirements).
• The tool for measuring the performance of applications is currently in its infancy and under development.
• Does not support synthetic monitoring or actual user monitoring, despite the fact that it integrates with a number of systems that do offer these features.
Datadog Pricing & Cost
The following is an outline of Datadog’s pricing structure:
• Free of charge for a maximum of 5 hosts (with 1-day data retention).
• Monthly fees between $15 and $23 per host (billed annually).
• Users that have fewer than 100 hosts are subject to an extra $31 per month charge for APM.
• Free trial for the first 14 days.
Full Review
Datadog is a venture capital-backed startup that was established in 2010 and provides a popular SaaS infrastructure monitoring service that is utilised by thousands of businesses worldwide. Datadog is able to assist in providing visibility throughout the entire devops stack by collecting a variety of metrics, as well as displaying the gathered data in user-friendly dashboards and reports. Users of Datadog do not need to be concerned about the storage of their data because the programme is hosted on the cloud. In point of fact, Datadog may preserve customer data for up to 15 months, allowing you to examine patterns that have occurred in the past.
The company started delivering an APM product at the beginning of 2017, and it is fully integrated with the infrastructure monitoring system that Datadog provides. However, due to the fact that the APM component of the product is still in its infancy, we will concentrate our assessment on the basic infrastructure monitoring product that Datadog offers.
Principal Attributes
In the next section, we will talk about some of the most important aspects of Datadog, as well as walk through the process of setting up Datadog.
Quick and simple installation and configuration.
In comparison to the time required to create your own solution, setting up Datadog is a breeze, which is one of the primary selling features of Datadog.
In order to get started with Datadog, you will need to install the open source Datadog Agent on a host. This agent is in charge of collecting metrics and is required before you can begin using Datadog. You will initially be prompted to register an account with Datadog, and after that, you will be given instructions on how to install the agent on a variety of platforms. You can find the instructions for installing the Datadog Agent on Windows in the screenshot that follows. Installing the Datadog Agent on Windows requires you to download the installer and run a straightforward command.
After the agent has been successfully installed on your system, it will immediately start collecting metrics and uploading them to Datadog’s cloud-based servers. Even though Datadog has extensive security measures in place, businesses that have extremely stringent security requirements (like financial institutions) may still prefer to use an on-premise monitoring solution, which Datadog does not provide. This is because on-premise monitoring solutions are more secure than cloud-based solutions.
After installing the agent, a dashboard will begin to populate with your system metrics such as CPU, network traffic, memory, load, and disc utilisation in a matter of minutes.
The entire process of installing the agent and watching your metrics begin to populate in a dashboard takes about five minutes, including setup time. Users who wish to install the agent on more than one server can get installation instructions by referring to these instructions.
Integrations
Since Datadog connects with over 200 distinct technologies, using it to track and manage the many tools at your disposal is a breeze thanks to this feature. When you create an account, you will be prompted to pick the tools that are currently part of the stack that you are utilising.
Datadog is compatible with a wide variety of well-known technologies, including cloud services such as Amazon Web Services (AWS) and databases such as PostgreSQL and MongoDB. Datadog also connects with collaboration platforms such as Slack and PagerDuty, which enables you to simply share graphs with your team members and send automated notifications whenever the system identifies any unexpected activity.
In order to activate an integration in Datadog, you will typically need to make a few modifications to a YAML template configuration file and then restart the agent. Setting up all of the integrations that you require will require an investment of some time; but, in the long run, that time could more than pay for itself because doing so will provide visibility into the performance of your entire technology stack.
We appreciate that Datadog’s integrations are available in an open source format; the codes may be viewed on this page. This ensures that the integrations will be kept up to date while also allowing users to make contributions that will be helpful to other Datadog users. In addition, if there is a technology that you use that Datadog does not yet interface with, you have the option of either requesting that Datadog create the integration or creating it yourself and sharing it with the community.
Dashboards that can be personalised
You are already familiar with the fundamental host-level dashboard, which presents fundamental system-level data such as disc, memory, and CPU use. After you have completed the installation of integrations for the many technologies that make up your stack, you will begin to see an increased number of integration-level dashboards that display key metrics from the specific tool.
The fact that dashboards in Datadog may be customised and visualised in a variety of various ways is one of the program’s many appealing features. Datadog offers a feature known as “tags,” which are essentially labels that can be personalised and then attached to data. Because of this, aggregating data and filtering it based on custom tags is a simple process.
There are a wide variety of other methods, in addition to tags, that you can personalise your dashboards. For instance, you may use a single line graph to represent numerous metrics, and you can differentiate between them using one of three line styles: solid, dotted, or dashed. You can also represent their path as a trend line in your visualisation.
The fact that individual team members can clone and construct their own dashboards to cater to their own preferences and the duties of their jobs, as well as monitor only the metrics that are important to them, is a feature that really impresses us.
Notifications generated automatically
There are a total of eight different monitors available with Datadog, including threshold-based alerts and HTTP checks. You have the option to set up alerts based on particular thresholds, changes in metrics, or enable anomaly detection, which employs algorithms to detect instances in which measurements deviate from their typical patterns (based on historical data). You can also build your own custom checks in order to be notified of specific events, such as when an application is not responding.
You are able to set up alerts based on any metric or combination of metrics across whatever tags you’ve put up across hosts. Additionally, you are able to set up either a simple alert (to alert on the aggregate number) or a multi alert (to trigger a notification for each separate host that experiences an issue).
In the event that you are aware that particular systems will be undergoing maintenance at a given time, you can plan downtime in advance so that you do not experience any false positives during this period of time.
The alert conditions can also be finely configured, giving you the ability to ensure that you are communicating with the appropriate individual(s) or team(s) at all times. The setting of distinct alert and warning thresholds is a feature that can be utilised with Datadog. In addition, you can alert various people based on the predefined conditions you choose by further personalising your message with template variables. This allows you to save time. Not only does Datadog interact with collaboration and communication technologies such as Slack and PagerDuty, but it also gives you the option to notify users through more conventional channels such as email and SMS/text message.
Is Datadog the programme that best fits your needs?
Datadog is a service for monitoring infrastructure, and they have recently expanded their offerings to include application performance monitoring features. Datadog is an amazing alternative that enables you to get up and running quickly and easily. If you want fully customizable dashboards, as well as highly configurable alerting, Datadog is the way to go. By leveraging Datadog’s 200+ integrations, you can obtain full insight across all of the tools and services in your stack.
Since Datadog only has cloud-based options, if you require an on-premise solution, you’ll have to go elsewhere. However, if you are looking for a monitoring solution that operates in the cloud, Datadog is an excellent choice to explore, and it is well worth your time to sign up for a free trial of the service for a period of 14 days. Because the agent is so simple to set up, you’ll be able to begin monitoring your servers in a matter of minutes, which will allow you to determine in a flash whether or not Datadog is the ideal solution for your needs.
