The Datadog Agent is software that runs on your hosts. It collects events and metrics from hosts and sends them to Datadog, where you can analyze your monitoring and performance data. The Datadog Agent is open source and its source code is available on GitHub at DataDog/datadog-agent.
It is recommended to fully install the Agent. However, a standalone DogStatsD package is available for Amazon Linux, CentOS, Debian, Fedora, Red Hat, SUSE, and Ubuntu. This package is used in containerized environments where DogStatsD runs as a sidecar or environments running a DogStatsD server without full Agent functionality.
The standalone DogStatsD package is installed with the Agent one-line install commandexcept every occurrence of datadog-agent should be replaced with datadog-dogstatsd. A Docker image is available in the DogStatsD6 Docker image repo.
Packages are also available for 64-bit x86 and Arm v8 architectures. For other architectures, use the source install.
To get started using the Agent, select your platform.
Datadog recommends you update Datadog Agent with every minor and patch release, or, at a minimum, monthly.
Upgrading to a major Datadog Agent version and keeping it updated is the only supported way to get the latest Agent functionality and fixes. The Agent has frequent update releases, though, and managing updates at enterprise scale can be challenging. That doesn't mean you should wait for major releases before updating. The right update cadence for your organization depends on your infrastructure and your configuration management practices, but aim for monthly.
