DogStatsD

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The easiest way to get your custom application metrics into Datadog is to send them to DogStatsD, a metrics aggregation service bundled with the Datadog Agent. DogStatsD implements the StatsD protocol and adds a few Datadog-specific extensions:

Histogram metric type
Service checks
Events
Tagging

Any compliant StatsD client works with DogStatsD and the Agent, but does not include the Datadog-specific extensions.

Note: DogStatsD does NOT implement timers from StatsD as a native metric type (though it does support them through histograms).

DogStatsD is available on Docker Hub and GCR:

Docker Hub	GCR
hub.docker.com/r/datadog/dogstatsd	gcr.io/datadoghq/dogstatsd

Docker Hub is subject to image pull rate limits. If you are not a Docker Hub customer, Datadog recommends that you update your Datadog Agent and Cluster Agent configuration to pull from GCR or ECR. For instructions, see Changing your container registry.

How it works

DogStatsD accepts custom metrics, events, and service checks over UDP and periodically aggregates and forwards them to Datadog.

Because it uses UDP, your application can send metrics to DogStatsD and resume its work without waiting for a response. If DogStatsD ever becomes unavailable, your application doesn’t experience an interruption.

As it receives data, DogStatsD aggregates multiple data points for each unique metric into a single data point over a period of time called the flush interval. DogStatsD uses a flush interval of 10 seconds.

Setup

DogStatsD consists of a server, which is bundled with the Datadog Agent, and a client library, which is available in multiple languages. The DogStatsD server is enabled by default over UDP port 8125 for Agent v6+. You can set a custom port for the server if necessary. Configure your client to match the address and port of the Datadog Agent DogStatsD server.

Datadog Agent DogStatsD server

If you need to change the port, configure the dogstatsd_port option in the main Agent configuration file, and restart the Agent. You can also configure DogStatsD to use a UNIX domain socket.

To enable a custom Agent DogStatsD server UDP port:

Set the dogstatsd_port parameter:

## @param dogstatsd_port - integer - optional - default: 8125
## Override the Agent DogStatsD port.
## Note: Make sure your client is sending to the same UDP port.
#
dogstatsd_port: 8125

Restart your Agent.

By default, DogStatsD listens on UDP port 8125, so you need to bind this port to your host port when running the Agent in a container. If your StatsD metrics come from outside of localhostyou must set DD_DOGSTATSD_NON_LOCAL_TRAFFIC to true to allow metric collection. In order to run the Agent with the DogStatsd server up, execute the following command:

docker run -d --cgroupns host \
              --pid host \
              -v /var/run/docker.sock:/var/run/docker.sock:ro \
              -v /proc/:/host/proc/:ro \
              -v /sys/fs/cgroup/:/host/sys/fs/cgroup:ro \
              -e DD_API_KEY=<DATADOG_API_KEY> \
              -e DD_DOGSTATSD_NON_LOCAL_TRAFFIC="true" \
              -p 8125:8125/udp \
              gcr.io/datadoghq/agent:latest

If you need to change the port used to collect StatsD metrics, use the DD_DOGSTATSD_PORT="<NEW_DOGSTATSD_PORT> environment variable. You can also configure DogStatsD to use a UNIX domain socket.

Origin detection over UDP

Origin detection is supported in Agent v6.10.0+, and allows DogStatsD to detect where the container metrics come from and automatically tag metrics. When this mode is enabled, all metrics received through UDP are tagged by the same pod tags as Autodiscovery metrics.

Origin detection in non-Kubernetes environments is based on an extension of the DogStatsD protocol in Datagram Format and Shell Usage. To enable the feature in the Agent, set the DD_DOGSTATSD_ORIGIN_DETECTION_CLIENT environment variable to true.

Note: Origin detection is not supported for Fargate environments.

StatsD metrics collection is enabled by default on UNIX domain socket. To start collecting your StatsD metrics over UDP, you need to activate the DogStatsD feature in the Operator settings.

Add features.dogstatsd.hostPortConfig.enabled to your datadog-agent.yaml manifest:

features:
    dogstatsd:
        hostPortConfig:
            enabled: true

This is an example datadog-agent.yaml manifest:

apiVersion: datadoghq.com/v2alpha1
kind: DatadogAgent
metadata:
  name: datadog
spec:
  global:
    credentials:
      apiSecret:
        secretName: datadog-secret
        keyName: api-key
  features:
    dogstatsd:
      hostPortConfig:
        enabled: true

This enables the Agent to collect StatsD metrics over UDP on port 8125.

Apply the change:
```
kubectl apply -f datadog-agent.yaml
```

Warning: The features.dogstatsd.hostPortConfig.hostPort parameter opens a port on your host. Make sure your firewall only allows access from your applications or trusted sources. If your network plugin doesn’t support hostPorts, so add hostNetwork: true in your Agent pod specifications. This shares the network namespace of your host with the Datadog Agent. It also means that all ports opened on the container are opened on the host. If a port is used both on the host and in your container, they conflict (since they share the same network namespace) and the pod does not start. Some Kubernetes installations do not allow this.

Send StatsD metrics to the Agent

Your application needs a reliable way to determine the IP address of its host. This is made simple in Kubernetes 1.7, which expands the set of attributes you can pass to your pods as environment variables. In versions 1.7 and above, you can pass the host IP to any pod by adding an environment variable to the PodSpec. For instance, your application manifest might look like this:

env:
    - name: DD_AGENT_HOST
      valueFrom:
          fieldRef:
              fieldPath: status.hostIP

With this, any pod running your application is able to send DogStatsD metrics with port 8125 on $DD_AGENT_HOST.

Note: As a best practice, Datadog recommends using unified service tagging when assigning attributes. Unified service tagging ties Datadog telemetry together through the use of three standard tags: env, service, and version. To learn how to unify your environment, see unified service tagging.

Origin detection over UDP

Origin detection is supported in Agent 6.10.0+ and allows DogStatsD to detect where the container metrics come from, and tag metrics automatically. When this mode is enabled, all metrics received through UDP are tagged by the same pod tags as Autodiscovery metrics.

To activate origin detection, add the global.originDetectionUnified.enabled setting to your datadog-agent.yaml manifest:
```
global:
    originDetectionUnified:
        enabled: true
```

Notes:

An alternative to UDP is UNIX Domain Sockets.
Origin detection with UDP can use the pod ID as the entity ID.

To use pod ID as the entity ID, add the following lines to your application manifest:

env:
    - name: DD_ENTITY_ID
      valueFrom:
          fieldRef:
              fieldPath: metadata.uid

To set tag cardinality for the metrics collected using origin detection, set the setting features.dogstatsd.tagCardinality to either low (default), orchestrator or high.

Note: For UDP, pod_name tags are not added by default to avoid creating too many custom metrics.

To gather custom metrics with DogStatsD with helm:

Update your datadog-values.yaml file to enable DogStatsD:
```
  dogstatsd:
    port: 8125
    useHostPort: true
    nonLocalTraffic: true
```
Note: hostPort functionality requires a networking provider that adheres to the CNI specification, such as Calico, Canal, or Flannel. For more information, including a workaround for non-CNI network providers, see the Kubernetes documentation: HostPort services do not work.
Warning: The hostPort parameter opens a port on your host. Make sure your firewall only allows access from your applications or trusted sources. If your network plugin doesn’t support hostPorts, so add hostNetwork: true in your Agent pod specifications. This shares the network namespace of your host with the Datadog Agent. It also means that all ports opened on the container are opened on the host. If a port is used both on the host and in your container, they conflict (since they share the same network namespace) and the pod does not start. Some Kubernetes installations do not allow this.

Upgrade your Agent configuration:

helm upgrade -f datadog-values.yaml <RELEASE_NAME> datadog/datadog

Update your application pods: Your application needs a reliable way to determine the IP address of its host. This is made simple in Kubernetes 1.7, which expands the set of attributes you can pass to your pods as environment variables. In versions 1.7 and above, you can pass the host IP to any pod by adding an environment variable to the PodSpec. For instance, your application manifest might look like this:
```
env:
    - name: DD_AGENT_HOST
      valueFrom:
          fieldRef:
              fieldPath: status.hostIP
```
With this, any pod running your application is able to send DogStatsD metrics through port 8125 on $DD_AGENT_HOST.

DogStatsD client

Install the DogStatsD client library for your preferred language and configure it to match the address and port of the Datadog Agent DogStatsD server.

Install the DogStatsD client

Official Datadog-DogStatsD client libraries are available for the following languages. Any compliant StatsD client works with DogStatsD and the Agent, but does not include the Datadog-specific features mentioned above:

go get github.com/DataDog/datadog-go/v5/statsd

Instantiate the DogStatsD client

Once your DogStatsD client is installed, instantiate it in your code:

dogstatsd_client, err := statsd.New("127.0.0.1:8125")
if err != nil {
    log.Fatal(err)
}

For more options, see Datadog’s GoDoc.

Client instantiation parameters

Note: As a best practice, Datadog recommends using unified service tagging when assigning tags. Unified service tagging ties Datadog telemetry together through the use of three standard tags: env, service, and version. To learn how to unify your environment, see unified service tagging.

In addition to the required DogStatsD configuration (url and port), the following optional parameters are available for your DogStatsD client:

Parameter	Type	Default	Description
`statsd_host`	String	`localhost`	The host of your DogStatsD server.
`statsd_port`	Integer	`8125`	The port of your DogStatsD server.
`statsd_socket_path`	String	`null`	The path to the DogStatsD UNIX domain socket (overrides `host` and `port`, only supported with the Agent v6+).
`statsd_constant_tags`	List of strings	`null`	Tags to apply to all metrics, events, and service checks.
`statsd_namespace`	String	`null`	Namespace to prefix all metrics, events, and service checks.

Parameter	Type	Default	Description
`host`	String	`localhost`	The host of your DogStatsD server.
`port`	Integer	`8125`	The port of your DogStatsD server.
`socket_path`	String	`null`	The path to the DogStatsD UNIX domain socket (overrides `host` and `port`, only supported with the Agent v6+).
`tags`	List of strings	`null`	Tags to apply to all metrics, events, and service checks.
`namespace`	String	`null`	Namespace to prefix to all metrics, events, and service checks.
`single_thread`	Boolean	`false`	Makes the client send the metrics on the main thread when enabled rather than in a companion thread.

The Go client has multiple options for configuring the behavior of your client.

Parameter	Type	Description
`WithNamespace()`	String	Configure a namespace to prefix to all metrics, events, and service checks.
`WithTags()`	List of strings	Global tags applied to every metric, event, and service check.

For all available options, see Datadog’s GoDoc.

Builder Method	Type	Default	Description
`prefix(String val)`	String	null	The prefix to apply to all metrics, events, and service checks.
`hostname(String val)`	String	localhost	The host name of the targeted StatsD server.
`port(int val)`	Integer	8125	The port of the targeted StatsD server.
`constantTags(String... val)`	String varargs	null	Global tags to be applied to every metric, event, and service check.
`blocking(boolean val)`	Boolean	false	The type of client to instantiate: blocking vs non-blocking.
`socketBufferSize(int val)`	Integer	-1	The size of the underlying socket buffer.
`enableTelemetry(boolean val)`	Boolean	false	Client telemetry reporting.
`entityID(String val)`	String	null	Entity ID for origin detection.
`errorHandler(StatsDClientErrorHandler val)`	Integer	null	Error handler in case of an internal client error.
`maxPacketSizeBytes(int val)`	Integer	8192/1432	The maximum packet size; 8192 over UDS, 1432 for UDP.
`processorWorkers(int val)`	Integer	1	The number of processor worker threads assembling buffers for submission.
`senderWorkers(int val)`	Integer	1	The number of sender worker threads submitting buffers to the socket.
`poolSize(int val)`	Integer	512	Network packet buffer pool size.
`queueSize(int val)`	Integer	4096	Maximum number of unprocessed messages in the queue.
`timeout(int val)`	Integer	100	the timeout in milliseconds for blocking operations. Applies to unix sockets only.

Parameter	Type	Default	Description
`host`	String	`localhost`	The host of your DogStatsD server. If this is not set the Agent looks at the `DD_AGENT_HOST` or `DD_DOGSTATSD_URL` environment variable.
`port`	Integer	`8125`	The port of your DogStatsD server. If this is not set, the Agent looks at the `DD_DOGSTATSD_PORT` or `DD_DOGSTATSD_URL` environment variable.
`socket_path`	String	`null`	The path to the DogStatsD UNIX domain socket (overrides `host` and `port`). This is only supported with Agent v6+. If this is not set, the Agent looks at the `DD_DOGSTATSD_URL` environment variable.
`global_tags`	List of Strings	`null`	Tags to apply to all metrics, events, and service checks. The `@dd.internal.entity_id` tag is appended to global_tags from the `DD_ENTITY_ID` environment variable.

Parameter	Type	Default	Description
`StatsdServerName`	String	`localhost`	The host name of the targeted StatsD server.
`StatsdPort`	Integer	`8125`	The port of the targeted StatsD server.
`Prefix`	String	`null`	Prefix to apply to every metric, event, and service check.
`ConstantTags`	List of strings	`null`	Global tags to be applied to every metric, event, and service check.

Dive into DogStatsD

DogStatsD and StatsD are broadly similar, however, DogStatsD contains advanced features which are specific to Datadog, including available data types, events, service checks, and tags:

Additional helpful documentation, links, and articles:

Send metrics to Datadog with DogStatsD.

Send events to Datadog with DogStatsD.

Send service checks to Datadog with DogStatsD.

If you’re interested in learning more about the datagram format used by DogStatsD, or want to develop your own Datadog library, see the datagram and shell usage section, which also explains how to send metrics and events straight from the command line.