Overview
To collect container metrics, configure the Docker stats receiver in your Datadog Exporter.
For more information, see the OpenTelemetry project documentation for the Docker stats receiver.
Setup
The Docker stats receiver needs access to the Docker socket. By default, the receiver looks for the Docker socket at unix:///var/run/docker.sock. If this is not the Docker socket path, specify the path in the endpoint configuration line.
Add the following lines to your Collector configuration:
receivers:
docker_stats:
endpoint: unix:///var/run/docker.sock # (default)
metrics:
container.network.io.usage.rx_packets:
enabled: true
container.network.io.usage.tx_packets:
enabled: true
container.cpu.usage.system:
enabled: true
container.memory.rss:
enabled: true
container.blockio.io_serviced_recursive:
enabled: true
container.uptime:
enabled: true
container.memory.hierarchical_memory_limit:
enabled: true
Note: If you are using the collector image, you may need to configure additional permissions for the collector to have access to the Docker socket.
The Docker stats receiver needs access to the Docker socket. In Kubernetes, if you are running Docker as a runtime, mount the Docker socket:
Add the following lines to values.yaml:
extraVolumes:
- name: docker-sock
hostPath:
path: /var/run/docker.sock
extraVolumeMounts:
- name: docker-sock
mountPath: /var/run/docker.sock
Add the following in the Collector configuration:
receivers:
docker_stats:
endpoint: unix:///var/run/docker.sock # default
metrics:
container.network.io.usage.rx_packets:
enabled: true
container.network.io.usage.tx_packets:
enabled: true
container.cpu.usage.system:
enabled: true
container.memory.rss:
enabled: true
container.blockio.io_serviced_recursive:
enabled: true
container.uptime:
enabled: true
container.memory.hierarchical_memory_limit:
enabled: true
Correlate traces with container metrics
To correlate traces with container metrics, both telemetry types must share common resource attributes. These attributes provide the necessary context for correlation.
- Configure Unified Service Tagging attributes.
- Configure the following attributes on both your traces and metrics:
| Attribute | Value | Description |
|---|
container.id (Required) | The Docker container ID. | Uniquely identifies the container. Essential for correlating spans with container metrics. Without this attribute on traces, container metric views are not shown in APM. |
container.name or k8s.container.name | The human‑readable container name (for example, redis-otel). | Used as the display name in Datadog. |
k8s.pod.name | The pod name (for example, redis-otel-59c9b5c9d5-s9t2r). | Enables navigation between pod and container context views in Kubernetes environments. |
Traces
To populate these resource attributes on traces:
You can use a resourcedetectionprocessor in your Collector config:
processors:
resourcedetection:
detectors: ["env", "container", "k8s"]
service:
pipelines:
traces:
processors: [resourcedetection]
You can add a container resource detector in your application code.
For example, using Go:
// resource.WithContainer() adds container.id attribute to the trace's resource
res, err := resource.New(
ctx,
resource.WithContainer(),
resource.WithFromEnv(),
semconv.ServiceNameKey.String("calendar"),
)
See the complete example in opentelemetry-examples.
Metrics
To populate these resource attributes on metrics, the docker_stats receiver automatically detects and adds these attributes on container metrics it emits.
Data collected
The Docker Stats receiver generates container metrics for the OpenTelemetry Collector. The Datadog Exporter translates container metrics to their Datadog counterparts for use in the following views:
Learn more about mapping between OpenTelemetry and Datadog semantic conventions for resource attributes.
The following table shows the Datadog container metric names that correspond to OpenTelemetry container metric names:
| OTEL | DATADOG | DESCRIPTION | FILTER |
|---|
| container.blockio.io_serviced_recursive | container.io.read.operations | Number of IOs (bio) issued to the disk by the group and descendant groups (Only available with cgroups v1). | operation: read |
| container.blockio.io_serviced_recursive | container.io.write.operations | Number of IOs (bio) issued to the disk by the group and descendant groups (Only available with cgroups v1). | operation: write |
| container.cpu.throttling_data.throttled_periods | container.cpu.throttled.periods | Number of periods when the container hits its throttling limit. | |
| container.cpu.throttling_data.throttled_time | container.cpu.throttled | Aggregate time the container was throttled. | |
| container.cpu.usage.system | container.cpu.system | System CPU usage, as reported by docker. | |
| container.cpu.usage.total | container.cpu.usage | Total CPU time consumed. | |
| container.cpu.usage.usermode | container.cpu.user | Time spent by tasks of the cgroup in user mode (Linux). Time spent by all container processes in user mode (Windows). | |
| container.memory.active_anon | container.memory.kernel | The amount of anonymous memory that has been identified as active by the kernel. | |
| container.memory.hierarchical_memory_limit | container.memory.limit | The maximum amount of physical memory that can be used by the processes of this control group (Only available with cgroups v1). | |
| container.memory.rss | kubernetes.memory.rss | The amount of memory that doesn’t correspond to anything on disk: stacks, heaps, and anonymous memory maps (Only available with cgroups v1). | |
| container.memory.total_cache | container.memory.cache | Total amount of memory used by the processes of this cgroup (and descendants) that can be associated with a block on a block device. Also accounts for memory used by tmpfs (Only available with cgroups v1). | |
| container.memory.usage.limit | container.memory.soft_limit | Memory limit of the container. | |
| container.memory.usage.total | container.memory.usage | Memory usage of the container. This excludes the cache. | |
| container.network.io.usage.rx_bytes | container.net.rcvd | Bytes received by the container. | |
| container.network.io.usage.rx_packets | container.net.rcvd.packets | Packets received. | |
| container.network.io.usage.tx_bytes | container.net.sent | Bytes sent. | |
| container.network.io.usage.tx_packets | container.net.sent.packets | Packets sent. | |
See OpenTelemetry Metrics Mapping for more information.
Full example configuration
For a full working example configuration with the Datadog exporter, see docker-stats.yaml.
Example logging output
Resource SchemaURL: https://opentelemetry.io/schemas/1.6.1
Resource attributes:
-> container.runtime: Str(docker)
-> container.hostname: Str(be51776e036e)
-> container.id: Str(be51776e036e04461169fce2847d4e77be3d83856b474ad544143afc3d48e9e5)
-> container.image.name: Str(sha256:9bdff337981de15f8cdf9e73b24af64a03e2e6dd1f156a274a15c1d8db98ab79)
-> container.name: Str(redis-otel)
ScopeMetrics #0
ScopeMetrics SchemaURL:
InstrumentationScope otelcol/dockerstatsreceiver 0.89.0-dev
Metric #6
Descriptor:
-> Name: container.cpu.utilization
-> Description: Percent of CPU used by the container.
-> Unit: 1
-> DataType: Gauge
NumberDataPoints #0
StartTimestamp: 2023-11-20 14:58:17.522765 +0000 UTC
Timestamp: 2023-11-20 14:58:19.550208 +0000 UTC
Value: 0.170933
