Quick Guide for Datadog Agent on Docker for Metrics

The Datadog Agent Docker integration allows you to collect metrics from containerized services by running the official Datadog Agent image alongside your application containers. This guide covers the essential setup using Docker environment variables to configure the agent and ensure that your services, such as Nginx, properly emit and report metrics.

  1. Use the official Datadog Agent image with Docker’s environment variables.

    docker run -d --name datadog-agent -e DD_API_KEY=kloudfuse -e DD_SITE=https://<kf-domain-name>/ingester -e DD_DOGSTATSD_NON_LOCAL_TRAFFIC=true -e DD_LOGS_ENABLED=true -e DD_LOGS_CONFIG_CONTAINER_COLLECT_ALL=true -e DD_APM_ENABLED=true -e DD_DD_URL=https://<kf-domain-name>/ingester --volume /var/run/docker.sock:/var/run/docker.sock:ro --volume /proc:/host/proc:ro --volume /sys:/host/sys:ro --volume /host:/host:ro --name datadog-agent datadog/agent:latest

  2. Expose Docker container metrics through its configuration; this is enabled by default when you mount the Docker socket.

    When running a service like Nginx in a container, ensure that the service emits metrics.

    docker run -d --name nginx -e "DD_AGENT_HOST=datadog-agent" -e "DD_DOGSTATSD_PORT=8125" nginx

  3. To collect additional metrics, enable “checks”, such as OpenMetrics checks: copy the conf.yaml example file into the conf.yaml in the openmetrics.d directory. See Datadog’s OpenMetrics.

    cp /etc/datadog-agent/conf.d/openmetrics.d/conf.yaml.example /etc/datadog-agent/conf.d/openmetrics.d/conf.yaml