Datadog Metric features and types

Every metric type except DISTRIBUTION is supported. Some visualization representations will look different when a dashboard is imported to Grafana Cloud.

• COUNT: Converted into a Prometheus gauge instead of a Prometheus counter. Prometheus counters cannot handle decreases.
• RATE: Multiplied by the flush interval and then converted into a Prometheus gauge. The rate is transformed into its count equivalent.
• GAUGE: Converted to a Prometheus gauge.
• SET: Converted to a Prometheus gauge.
• HISTOGRAM: The server receives a set of GAUGE and RATE metrics that are converted.

Data Model

Datadog metric names and tags are supported by Grafana, but might look different in Grafana dashboards. However, they are not actually modified and can be returned to a Datadog Agent.

• Metric names: Because Prometheus metric names have different character restrictions than Datadog, the translation might look different.
• Tags: Called labels in Prometheus. Since Prometheus labels have different character restrictions than Datadog, the translation might look different.

Other

Datadog features

Datadog functions

• Algorithms
  • anomalies(): no
  • forecast(): no
  • outliers(): no
• Arithmetic
  • abs(): yes
  • log2(): yes
  • log10(): no
  • cumsum(): yes
  • integral(): no
• Count
  • count_non_zero(): yes
  • count_not_null(): yes
• Exclusion
  • exclude_null(): yes
  • clamp_min(): yes
  • clamp_max(): yes
  • cutoff_min(): yes
  • cutoff_max(): yes
• Interpolation
  • fill(): no
  • default_zero(): no
• Rank
  • top(): partially, “area” and “l2norm” aggregation methods are not supported. The convenience functions (e.g. bottom10_min()) are supported
• Rate
  • per_second(): yes
  • per_minute(): yes
  • per_hour(): yes
  • dt(): no but agent sends metrics every 10s anyway.
  • diff(): yes
  • monotonic_diff(): no
  • derivative(): no
• Regression
  • robust_trend(): no
  • trend_line(): no
  • piecewise_constant(): no
• Rollup
  • rollup(): partially, see “Time Aggregation (Rollup)” in previous section
  • moving_rollup(): no
• Smoothing
  • autosmooth(): no
  • ewma_[3/5/10/20](): yes
  • median_[3/5/7/9](): yes
• Timeshift
  • timeshift(): yes
  • <TIMEPERIOD>_before(): yes

Dashboard Coverage

This section describes the Datadog features that the Datadog Dashboard Translator supports. Unknown widgets are shown as text panels in the converted dashboard.

Dashboard Types

Timeboards are supported and automatically snap to a fixed grid.

Datadog screenboards have free-form layouts and different graphs can have different time scopes, they are partially supported. The Grafana migration tool transforms a screenboard into a timeboard.

Widgets

• Alert Graph: no
• Alert Value: no
• Change: no
• Check Status: yes, that status checks are converted into Prometheus metrics in the background.
• Distribution : no
• Event Stream: no
• Event Timeline: no
• Free Text: no
• Geomap: no
• Group: yes
• HeatMap: no
• Hostmap: no
• Iframe: no
• Image: yes
• Links: no
• Log Stream: no
• Monitor Summary: no
• Network: no
• Notes : yes
• Query value: partial; each widget can only have a single query.
• Scatter Plot: no
• Service Level Objective (SLO): no
• Service Map: no
• Service Summary: no
• Table: partial; each widget can only have a single query and a basic attempt is made for splitting fields into their own columns.
• Timeseries: yes
• Top List: partial; each widget can only have a single query.

Other

• Template Variables: yes
• Colors: no
• Events Overlay: no