Datadog

Overview

Datadog is an application performance monitoring platform that provides real-time observability into entities, servers, databases, and tools, providing developers with a comprehensive understanding of their infrastructure as well as the ability to identify areas for improvement.

Cortex is uniquely equipped to augment Datadog's tools, providing greater visibility into your entities. In this guide, you'll learn how to set up the Datadog integration to pull in services and metrics for entities:

• Monitors

• SLOs

• Dependencies

How to configure Datadog with Cortex

Prerequisites

Before getting started, make sure you have created the following:

• Datadog application key

  • You can create this in Datadog under Organizational Settings > Applications Key.

• Datadog API key

  • You can create this in Datadog under Organizational Settings > API Key.

Configure the integration in Cortex

1. In Cortex, navigate to the Datadog settings page:

   1. In Cortex, click your avatar in the lower left corner, then click Settings.

   2. Under "Integrations", click Datadog.

2. Click Add configuration.

3. Configure the Datadog integration form:

   • Account alias: Enter a name that Cortex will associate this configuration with.

   • App key: Enter the application key you generated in Datadog.

     • This key appears under the Key column in Datadog while viewing your list of Application Keys.

       
   • API key: Enter the API key you generated in Datadog.

   • Region: Select your Datadog region from the dropdown.
   • Custom subdomain: Enter the custom subdomain for your Datadog instance.

     • This field only takes the subdomain, not the entire URL. For example, this field would take cortex-docs from https://cortex-docs.datadoghq.com.

   • Environments: Optionally, enter environment tags for Datadog entities.

     • If you set an environment tag here, make sure to set the env dropdown in Datadog to match.
4. Click Save.

Once you save your configuration, you'll see it listed on the integration's settings page in Cortex. If you’ve set everything up correctly, you’ll see the option to Remove Integration in Settings.

You can also use the Test all configurations button to confirm that the configuration was successful. If your configuration is valid, you’ll see a banner that says “Configuration is valid. If you see issues, please see documentation or reach out to Cortex support.”

Configure the integration for multiple Datadog accounts​

The Datadog integration has multi-account support. You can add a configuration for each additional by repeating the process above.

Each configuration requires an alias, which Cortex uses to correlate the designated with registrations for various entities. Registrations can also use a default configuration without a listed alias. You can edit aliases and default configurations from the Datadog page in your Cortex settings. Select the edit icon next to a given configuration and toggle Set as default on. If you only have one configuration, it will automatically be set as the default.How to connect Cortex entities to Datadog

How to connect Cortex entities to Datadog

Tag discovery

By default, Cortex will use the entity tag (e.g. my-entity) as the "best guess" for Datadog tag. For example, if your entity tag is my-entity, then the corresponding tag in Datadog should also be my-entity.

If your Datadog tag don’t cleanly match the Cortex entity tag, you can override this in the Cortex entity descriptor.

Import entities from Datadog

See the Create services documentation for instructions on importing entities.

Editing the entity descriptor

x-cortex-apm:
  datadog:
    serviceTags:
      - tag: entity
        value: brain
        alias: my-default-alias
      - tag: entity
        value: cerebrum
        alias: my-other-alias

Field	Description	Required
tag	Tag for the project in Datadog	✓
value	Value for the project; Cortex will find monitors and SLOs by querying tag:value OR tag:value2 ...	✓
alias	Alias for the configuration in Cortex (only needed if you have opted into multi-account support)

These tags are used to "discover" your monitors and SLOs. Cortex will find monitors and SLOs by querying tag:value OR tag:value2 ...

If you want to hard code and/or override discovery, you can define a monitors or SLOs block in the entity descriptor.

Monitors and SLOs

Adding monitors let you see information about their current status directly from a catalog - via the Monitors column - and under the Operations section of an entity page. You can find your monitors from Datadog's Manage Monitors page.

The ID of a monitor is found in the URL when you click on a monitor in your Datadog dashboard i.e., https://app.datadoghq.com/monitors/****.

info:
  x-cortex-apm:
    datadog: 
      monitors:
        - id: 12345
          alias: my-default-alias
        - id: 67890
          alias: my-other-alias

Like monitors, Datadog SLOs can be found in the Operations section of an entity page. You can find the SLOs for your instance on Datadog's SLO status page.

The ID for the SLO can be found in the URL when you click on an SLO in the Datadog dashboard. For example, https://app.datadoghq.com/slo?slo_id=****&timeframe=7d&tab=status_and_history.

info:
  x-cortex-slos:
    datadog:
      - id: 0b73859a3e2504bf09ad23a161702654
        alias: my-default-alias
      - id: 228499184a9efe34d4e4e9df838c7fa1
        alias: my-other-alias

Monitors and SLOs have the same field definitions.

Field	Description	Required
id	Datadog ID for the monitor or SLO	✓
alias	Alias for the configuration in Cortex (only needed if you have opted into multi-account support)

Dependency mapping

Cortex automatically syncs dependencies from Datadog's Service Map, using the entity identifier (x-cortex-tag) to map entities found in the Service Map.

The relationships Cortex discovers through the integration will feed directly into the Relationships graph, so you can easily visualize the connections between your entities.

If you have two entities - for example, entity-one and entity-two - that have a dependency edge in Datadog's Service Map, both entities should exist in Cortex with the same entity identifiers.

You can override this by defining entity tags where tag = entity and value = entity name in Datadog Service Map.

If the entity tag in Cortex does not exactly match the entity identifier in Datadog, the dependencies will not automatically sync. You can override automatic discovery by defining values in the entity descriptor.

Expected results

Entity pages

With the Datadog integration, you'll be able to find monitors and SLOs on an entity's home page. High-level information about monitors and SLOs appears in the Overview tab.

Click Monitoring in the entity's sidebar to see more detailed data about both monitors and SLOS. Both sections display tags for Pass, Fail, Warning, and No Data for each monitor or SLO.

• The SLOs column shows each SLO, its target(s), the current value for that entity, and its status.

• The Monitors column shows the title for each monitor, its query (if available), and its status.

Clicking any block with a nonzero value will open a modal with more detailed information. The monitor modals will list all monitors with the applicable status. The SLO modals will also display targets for each SLO that is passing or failing.

Scorecards and CQL

With the Datadog integration, you can create Scorecard rules and write CQL queries based on Datadog metrics, monitors, and SLOS.

See more examples in the CQL Explorer in Cortex.

You can read more about Datadog's metrics and custom metrics in their docs.

Metrics

Timeseries data from Datadog.

• Metric

• Timestamp

Definition: datadog.metrics(query: Text, lookback: Duration, alias: Text | Null)

Example

You can use the datadog.metrics() expression to evaluate the health of your entities in a Scorecard:

datadog.metrics(query="system.cpu.usage{service:" + datadog.serviceNames().join(" OR service:") + "}",lookback=duration("P2D")).averageBy((point) => point.metricValue) < 0.10

This rule makes sure that a given entity's average CPU usage is less than 10% over the last two days.

Monitors

Monitors associated with a given entity via ID or tags. You can use these data to check whether an entity has monitors associated with it, or whether an entity has the right types of monitors.

• Created at

• Creator email

• Creator name

• Name

• Overall state

• Query

• Tags

• URL

Definition: datadog.monitors()

Example

For a Scorecard focused on operational maturity, this expression can be used to make sure an entity has at least one Datadog monitor set up:

datadog.monitors().length >= 1

SLOs

SLOs associated with a given entity via ID or tags. You can use these data to check whether an entity has SLOs associated with it and if those SLOs are passing.

• History

• ID

• Name

• Operation

• Remaining budget

• SLI value

  • Datum

  • Timeseries

• SLO target

• Source

• Thresholds

  • Name

  • Threshold

Definition: slos()

Examples

For a Scorecard focused on operational maturity, this expression can be used to make sure an entity has associated SLOs in Datadog:

slos().length > 0

This rule checks that there is at least one SLO is set up. While this rule makes sense in a Scorecard's first level, a rule checking the status of the SLO would make sense in a higher level:

slos().all((slo) => slo.passing)

Entities will pass this rule if all SLOs associated with it have "passing" status.

Discovery audit

Cortex will pull recent changes from your Datadog environment into the discovered entities list. Here, you can find new entities in Datadog that have not been imported into the catalog - these will have the tag New APM Resource - as well as entities in the catalog that no longer exist in Datadog - these will have the tag APM Resource Not Detected.

Background sync

The dependency sync runs automatically each day at 12 a.m. UTC, and can be run manually via the Sync dependencies button.

FAQs and troubleshooting

Can I set a Scorecard rule to monitor Datadog monitors/SLOs based on tags?

Yes, you can specify key-value pairs that allow Cortex to discover your SLOs and monitors, and use these tags in Scorecard rules.

How does Datadog work with other dependency sources?

When leveraging multiple dependency sources such as Datadog and a catalog entity's YAML, all the sources would be merged together and Cortex will de-duplicate the dependencies.

For example, if an entity YAML indicates X → Y and Datadog indicates X → Y and X → Z, the entity will display two edges presented as X → Y and X → Z.