Agent

Question 1

What’s the DD agent?

Answer 1

It’s a 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.

Question 2

Do you need to install the full agent?

Answer 2

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.

Question 3

What are agent v6 and v7 composed of?

Answer 3

They are composed of a main process responsible for collecting infrastructure metrics, logs, and receiving DogStatsD metrics.
The main components to this process are:

• The Collector is in charge of running checks and collecting metrics.
• The Forwarder sends payloads to Datadog.

Question 4

The collector gathers metrics every x seconds?

Answer 4

The collector gathers all standard metrics every 15 seconds.
Agent v6 embeds a Python 2.7 interpreter to run integrations and custom checks.

Question 5

What does the agent forwarder do?

Answer 5

The Agent forwarder send metrics over HTTPS to Datadog.

Question 6

With the forwarder, how are logs sent to DD?

Answer 6

Logs are sent over an SSL-encrypted TCP connection to Datadog.

Question 7

What is DogStatsD?

Answer 7

In v6, DogStatsD is a Golang implementation of Etsy’s StatsD metric aggregation daemon.

It is used to receive and roll up arbitrary metrics over UDP or Unix socket, thus allowing custom code to be instrumented without adding latency.

Question 8

With Agent v6+, what is the command line interface (CLI) based on?

Answer 8

With Agent v6+, the command line interface is based on subcommands. To run a subcommand, first invoke the Agent binary:

Question 9

What system checks does the IOT agent include?

Answer 9

• System (includes CPU, IO, load, memory, swap, and uptime)
• Disk
• Network
• Systemd
• NTP

The IoT Agent also supports:
- Custom metric collection using an embedded DogStatsD server
- Log collection using tailing files, TCP/UDP, and journald

Question 10

What doesn’t the IOT agent include/support?

Answer 10

The IoT Agent does not include the Python interpreter and other integrations pre-packaged with the standard Agent.

It also doesn’t support tracing for APM, live process monitoring, or network performance monitoring.

Question 11

IOT Agent footprint?

Answer 11

CPU: 0.5% (on a VM with 2 Intel Xeon VCPUs)
Memory: 36 MB
Network bandwidth: 237 bps up / 79 bps down
Disk: 63 MB

Question 12

DD Agent overhead?

Answer 12

Agent Test version: 7.34.0
CPU: ~ 0.08% of the CPU used on average
Memory: ~ 130MB of RAM used (RSS memory)
Network bandwidth: ~ 140 B/s ▼ | 800 B/s ▲
Disk:
Linux 830MB to 880MB depending on the distribution
Windows: 870MB

Question 13

Which version of the agent is required for logs?

Answer 13

v6.0+.

Question 14

In K8s how do you enable log collection?

Answer 14

Setting DD_CONTAINER_EXCLUDE_LOGS prevents the Datadog Agent from collecting and sending its own logs. Remove this parameter if you want to collect the Datadog Agent logs.

Question 15

In Docker how do you enable log collection?

Answer 15

Datadog Agent 6+ collects logs from containers. Two types of installation are available:

Configuring log collection depends on your current environment.

Question 16

In DD agent how do you enable log collection?

Answer 16

To enable log collection with an Agent running on your host, change logs_enabled: false to logs_enabled: true in the Agent’s main configuration file (datadog.yaml).

Question 17

Can you collect custom logs with DD agent?

Answer 17

Datadog Agent v6 can collect logs and forward them to Datadog from files, the network (TCP or UDP), journald, and Windows channel

Question 18

How can you scrub sensitive data from your logs?

Answer 18

If your logs contain sensitive information that need redacting, configure the Datadog Agent to scrub sensitive sequences by using the log_processing_rules parameter in your configuration file with the mask_sequences type.

Question 19

What is the default transport for logs?

Answer 19

For Agent v6.19+/v7.19+, the default transport used for your logs is compressed HTTPS instead of TCP for the previous versions.

Question 20

Changes between major agent versions

Answer 20

Agent v7 is the latest major version of the Datadog Agent.
The only change from Agent v6 is that this version only includes support for Python 3 for integrations and custom checks.