On This Page

Home / Stream/ Sources/Datadog Agent

Datadog Agent ​

Datadog Agent is open-source software that monitors the host on which it runs. Acting as a DogStatsD server, Datadog Agent also aggregates metrics from other processes or containers on the host.

Type: Push | TLS Support: YES | Event Breaker Support: No

Cribl Stream can ingest the following from Datadog Agent, in bundled form:

  • Logs.
  • Metrics (gauge, rate, counter, and histogram).
  • Service checks.
  • Agent metadata and other events emitted from the /intake/ endpoint.

Datadog Agent also emits Application Performance Monitoring data, which it sends to Datadog. Cribl Stream does not currently support ingesting this APM data.

On the system(s) that you want to monitor, you’ll need to install Datadog Agent and configure it to send data to Cribl Stream. Cribl Stream can parse, filter, and enrich that data, and then send it to any supported Destination, including a Cribl Stream Datadog Destination. (By default, Datadog Agent sends data only to Datadog.)

For inbound log data, this Source supports gzip -compression when the Content-Encoding: gzip connection header is set. For other data types, it assumes that all inbound data is compressed using deflate.

Configure Datadog to use Datadog API v1 ​

This Source communicates with the Datadog API. Although v2 is the latest version of this API, this Source uses v1, which Datadog still supports.

To configure your Datadog Agent to work with this Source, ensure that in the datadog.yaml file, use_v2_api.series is set to false. Otherwise, when Datadog Agent sends metrics, Cribl Stream will not receive them, and API Key invalid, dropping transaction errors will appear in the Datadog Agent logs.

Potential Cribl Stream support for Datadog API v2 is being tracked as CRIBL-18281 in Known Issues.

Configuring Cribl Stream to Ingest Datadog Agent Output ​

From the top nav, click Manage, then select a Worker Group to configure. Next, you have two options:

To configure via the graphical QuickConnect UI, click Routing > QuickConnect (Stream) or Collect (Edge). Next, click Add Source at left. From the resulting drawer’s tiles, select [Push >] Datadog Agent. Next, click either Add Destination or (if displayed) Select Existing. The resulting drawer will provide the options below.

Or, to configure via the Routing UI, click Data > Sources (Stream) or More > Sources (Edge). From the resulting page’s tiles or left nav, select [Push >] Datadog Agent. Next, click New Source to open a New Source modal that provides the options below.

General Settings ​

Input ID: Enter a unique name to identify this Datadog Agent Source definition.

Address: Enter hostname/IP to listen for Datadog Agent data. E.g., localhost or 0.0.0.0.

Port: Enter the port number to listen on.

Optional Settings ​

Tags: Optionally, add tags that you can use to filter and group Sources in Cribl Stream’s Manage Sources page. These tags aren’t added to processed events. Use a tab or hard return between (arbitrary) tag names.

TLS Settings (Server Side) ​

Enabled defaults to No. When toggled to Yes:

Certificate name: Name of the predefined certificate.

Private key path: Server path containing the private key (in PEM format) to use. Path can reference $ENV_VARS.

Passphrase: Passphrase to use to decrypt private key.

Certificate path: Server path containing certificates (in PEM format) to use. Path can reference $ENV_VARS.

CA certificate path: Server path containing CA certificates (in PEM format) to use. Path can reference $ENV_VARS.

Authenticate client (mutual auth): Require clients to present their certificates. Used to perform mutual authentication using SSL certs. Defaults to No. When toggled to Yes:

  • Validate client certs: Reject certificates that are not authorized by a CA in the CA certificate path, or by another trusted CA (e.g., the system’s CA). Defaults to Yes.

  • Common name: Regex matching subject common names in peer certificates allowed to connect. Defaults to .*. Matches on the substring after CN=. As needed, escape regex tokens to match literal characters. E.g., to match the subject CN=worker.cribl.local, you would enter: worker\.cribl\.local.

Minimum TLS version: Optionally, select the minimum TLS version to accept from connections.

Maximum TLS version: Optionally, select the maximum TLS version to accept from connections.

Persistent Queue Settings ​

In this section, you can optionally specify persistent queue storage, using the following controls. This will buffer and preserve incoming events when a downstream Destination is down, or exhibiting backpressure.

On Cribl-managed Cribl.Cloud Workers (with an Enterprise plan), this tab exposes only the Enable Persistent Queue toggle. If enabled, PQ is automatically configured in Always On mode, with a maximum queue size of 1 GB disk space allocated per PQ-enabled Source, per Worker Process.

The 1 GB limit is on uncompressed inbound data, and no compression is applied to the queue. This limit is not configurable. For configurable queue size, compression, mode, and other options below, use a hybrid Group.

Enable Persistent Queue: Defaults to No. When toggled to Yes:

Mode: Select a condition for engaging persistent queues.

  • Always On: This default option will always write events to the persistent queue, before forwarding them to Cribl Stream’s data processing engine.
  • Smart: This option will engage PQ only when the Source detects backpressure from Cribl Stream’s data processing engine.

Max buffer size: The maximum number of events to hold in memory before reporting backpressure to the sender and writing the queue to disk. Defaults to 1000. (This buffer is per connection, not just per Worker Process - and this can dramatically expand memory usage.)

Commit frequency: The number of events to send downstream before committing that Stream has read them. Defaults to 42.

Max file size: The maximum data volume to store in each queue file before closing it and (optionally) applying the configured Compression. Enter a numeral with units of KB, MB, etc. If not specified, Cribl Stream applies the default 1 MB.

Max queue size: The maximum amount of disk space that the queue is allowed to consume on each Worker Process. Once this limit is reached, this Source will stop queueing data and block incoming data. Required, and defaults to 5 GB. Accepts positive numbers with units of KB, MB, GB, etc. Can be set as high as 1 TB, unless you’ve configured a different Max PQ size per Worker Process in Worker Group Settings.

Queue file path: The location for the persistent queue files. Defaults to $CRIBL_HOME/state/queues. To this field’s specified path, Cribl Stream will append /<worker-id>/inputs/<input-id>.

Compression: Optional codec to compress the persisted data after a file is closed. Defaults to None; Gzip is also available.

In Cribl Stream 4.1 and later, Source-side PQ’s default Mode is Always on, to best ensure events’ delivery. For details on optimizing this selection, see Always On versus Smart Mode.

You can optimize Workers’ startup connections and CPU load at Worker Group Settings > Worker Processes.

Processing Settings ​

Fields ​

In this section, you can add Fields to each event, using Eval-like functionality.

Name: Field name.

Value: JavaScript expression to compute field’s value, enclosed in quotes or backticks. (Can evaluate to a constant.)

Pre-Processing ​

In this section’s Pipeline drop-down list, you can select a single existing Pipeline to process data from this input before the data is sent through the Routes.

Advanced Settings ​

Enable Proxy Protocol: Toggle to