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Datadog data source for Grafana
Enterprise

Datadog data source for Grafana

The Datadog data source for Grafana allows you to query and visualize Datadog metrics from within Grafana. With our hosted Datadog metrics service, you can also forward metrics directly from your Datadog agents.

Requirements

This plugin has the following requirements:

  • A Datadog account
  • One of the following account types:
    • Grafana Cloud: Pro customers, Advanced customers, or Pro trial users with the Enterprise plugin add-on enabled
    • Grafana Enterprise: Customers with an activated license and a user with Grafana server or organization administration permissions
  • The Enterprise plugin add-on enabled

Install the data source plugin

To install the data source, refer to Installation.

Compatibility requirements

For this plugin, there are no compatibility requirements.

Verify that the plugin is installed

  1. In Grafana Enterprise from the left-hand menu, navigate to Configuration > Data sources.
  2. From the top-right corner, click the Add data source button.
  3. Search for Datadog in the search field, and hover over the Datadog search result.
  4. Click the Select button for Datadog.
    • If you can click the Select button, then it is installed.
    • If the button is missing or disabled, then the plugin is not installed. Check to see if your Grafana Enterprise license is valid, and reinstall the plugin. If you still need help, contact Grafana Labs.

Note: On Grafana Cloud, it can take up to 15 minutes to see the data source plugin within Grafana.

Choose if you want to host the Datadog metrics in Grafana Cloud

The Datadog data source plugin can work by being connected to Datadog (using an API key) or by sending the metrics from the Datadog agents. By being connected to Datadog using an API key, you are only hosting the metrics in Datadog but can face API rate limits. Using our hosted Datadog Metrics service solves this issue by storing data in Grafana Cloud.

The section below describes how to connect Datadog to Grafana. The page dedicated to hosted Datadog Metrics describes how to send data from your Datadog agents to Grafana.

Get an API key and application key from Datadog

  1. Go to https://datadoghq.com.
  2. Set up an API key and copy your application key.
  3. Add the API key to the Datadog plugin:

Get your Application Key by navigate to Profile -> Organization Settings -> Application Key and copying the desired KEY ID.

Configure the data source

To add a new Datadog data source, refer to Add a data source, and fill in the following fields:

Datadog settings

FieldDescription
NameA name for this particular Datadog data source.
API URLURL to the Datadog API. For example, https://api.datadoghq.com.
API KeyAPI key from Datadog.
APP KeyApplication key from Datadog.
Show API rate limitsShow Datadog API limits for each queried endpoint. To view the API rate limits, go to the Query Inspector > JSON tab, and set Select source to DataFrame structure
Disable Data linksCheck this to disable data links. Data links are the links that takes user to the datadog app when they interact with panels
Enable Basic AuthUse Basic authentication when calling the API URL. This is useful when using a proxy.

Configure the data source with provisioning

Configure the Datadog data source using configuration files with Grafana’s provisioning system. To learn more about how the provisioning system works, including all of the data source settings, refer to Provisioning Grafana.

Here is a provisioning example for this data source:

apiVersion: 1
datasources:
  - name: DATADOG
    type: grafana-datadog-datasource
    access: proxy
    basicAuth: false
    jsonData:
      url: https://api.datadoghq.com
      api_key: API Key
      app_key: Application Key
      logApiRateLimits: false
      disableDataLinks: false

Query the data source

The query editor allows you to query Datadog, get monitor status, get service-level objectives (SLOs), perform arithmetic, and alias the graph’s legend.

Query

Get metric queries by setting QueryType to Query.

  • Select the metric or click the query edit button to type your metric
  • Select the aggregation type (default is average)
  • Optionally select one or more tags if you want to filter results with From and Group By
  • Optionally select the functions dropdown to select a Datadog function. These can be reordered and removed by clicking on them and clicking the arrows or x

Service-level objectives (SLOs)

Get SLOs by setting Query type to SLO. Select an objective from the list. The SLOs are populated from your Datadog account.

With the result type option, you can choose one of timeseries/value. With the value option selected, only the current SLI value will be displayed. For monitor type SLO queries, you can optionally expand individual monitor results.

Note You can find the underlying API documentation in the datadog docs. Also note that the underlying API is in beta.

Arithmetic

Use metric arithmetic by setting Query type to Arithmetic.

  • To perform an arithmetic operation, there must be at least one other query in the query editor.
  • The supported arithmetic operations are +, -, *, /, and ().
  • To refer to a metric, use # followed by the query’s name. For example, #A.
Expression example

#A * 2 doubles the result of query A.

#A / #B divides the results of query A by query B.

Aliasing the legend

You can use Alias By and Alias RegExp to change the text in the graph’s legend. For Alias By, use plain text, scoped variables listed as follows, or both.

Scoped variables for meticsReplaced with
$__metricmetric name
$__display_namemetric name
$__expressionfull metric expression
$__aggrmetric aggregation function (e.g. avg, max, min, sum)
$__scopemetric scope (e.g. region, site, env, host)
$__tag_namecorresponding tagName. Applicable only to group by queries. (e.g: when using group by host use $__tag_host as alias)
$__scope_namewhen there are multiple scope items available, use this alias to extract the specific scope name. (e.g: to extract host scope, use $__scope_host as alias)
Scoped variables for (SLOs)Replaced with
$__namename (same as what is selected in the Objective dropdown)
$__aggraggregation function (e.g. avg, max, min, sum)
$__metricmetric name
$__scopescope name
$__numeratormetric used as the numerator in the SLO calculation
$__denominatormetric used as the denominator in the SLO calculation

To use regular-expression aliasing, fill out Alias RegExp with a regular expressions to find matches that are separated by commas.

Monitor

Display the monitors list and status information by setting Query type to Monitor. Alerts in Grafana are referred to as monitors in Datadog. For more information, refer to Monitors.

The following options are available:

  • Count by status, type, tags, or mute status
  • Monitors list

Count by: Display the count of monitors by status, type, tag, or mute status.

Monitors list: List all of the monitors and their corresponding states and other related details.

Query: For the Count by and Monitors list options, you can optionally specify the filter query. If you specify the filter query, the count or list will return only the monitors that match the query.

For more information about monitor queries, refer to QUERY.

Example queries:

  • status:(alert OR ok OR "no data" OR warn) lists the monitors with at least one of status alert, ok, no data, or warn.
  • status:(alert OR warn) type:metric "cassandra" lists the metric monitors with alert or warn status and also related to “cassandra”.
  • id:(7254197 OR 240232) displays only the status of monitors with ID 7254197 or 240232.

Note: For the Monitors list option, and due to API limits, only the top n monitors specified by the items per page setting are retrieved and displayed.

All the monitor queries will have data links to the datadog application. To disable the data links, check Disable Data links option in the config.

Similar to a monitor search, you can also search and filter your monitor group details. Underlying API details can be found here. This endpoint requires the monitors_read authorization scope.

Events

Events query allow you to query the datadog event stream.

  • This query returns a maximum of 1000 most recent result
  • Results will be filtered to dashboard’s time range automatically
  • Optionally, you can filter the results by sources, tags and priority

Real User Monitoring / RUM

RUM query allow you to query the datadog RUM events

  • This query returns a maximum of 100 recent events
  • Results will be filtered to dashboard’s time range automatically

You can also use the following alias when using RUM query type

Scoped variables for meticsReplaced with
$__metric$__metric will replaced by metric name
$__label_xyzreplaced with the label xyz where xyz can be any valid label returned by DD. example: $__label_host
$__no_labelswhen your alias have $__no_labels, grafana won’t attach additional labels to the fields

Logs

Logs query allow you to query the datadog logs

  • This query returns a maximum of 100 recent logs
  • Results will be filtered to dashboard’s time range automatically

Error messages

When the underlying DataDog API returns non successful status codes, the plugin will throw the error with corresponding status code.

If you are seeing error message such as 429 Too Many Requests, that potentially indicates that you are hitting the DataDog API rate limits. You can learn more about the DataDog rate limits here.

Templates and variables

To add a new Datadog query variable, refer to Add a query variable. Use your Datadog data source as your data source. The following queries are available:

QueryDescription
*Fetches the list of available metrics
tagReturns all tag tags using the value tag
scopeReturns all scope tags using the value scope
hostReturns all host tags
deviceReturns all device tags
envReturns all env tags
regionReturns all region tags
siteReturns all site tags
statusReturns all status tags
versionReturns all version tags

For custom tag groups, enter the tag group name. For example, if your custom tag group name is subscription_name, then enter that in the Query field.

After you create a variable, you can it in your Datadog queries. For more information, refer to Variable syntax.

For more information about variables, refer Templates and variables.

Import a dashboard for Datadog

To import a dashboard, refer to Import a dashboard.

To find your imported dashboards, go to Configuration > Data sources.

To see the available pre-made dashboards, select the Datadog data source, and select the Dashboards tab.

Ad-hoc filters

Grafana Enterprise type of template variable called Ad-hoc filters, which applies to all the Datadog queries in a dashboard. This filter acts as sa quick filter. An ad-hoc variable for Datadog fetches all the key-value pairs from tags, such as region:east or region:west, and uses them as query tags. To create this variable, select the Ad-hoc filters type and choose your Datadog data source. You can name this variable anything.

Learn more