Alert
The notification itself that tells people or systems that a monitoring condition has been met, designed as a layer separate from the monitor that holds the condition.
Monitors and alertsDatadog Glossary
A glossary that explains Datadog terms and the fundamentals of monitoring and observability from a practitioner's point of view.
No matching terms found
A
C
Cardinality
For a given metric, the number of distinct tag values tied to a single tag key. Because this number is multiplied across tag keys, adding just one tag can make the amount you manage dozens of times larger.
Metrics and monitoringCustom Metrics
Metrics that you define and send yourself, beyond what Datadog collects automatically through its supported integrations. Each unique combination of a metric name and tag values counts as one custom metric, and going over your plan's allocation incurs additional charges.
Metrics and monitoringE
Event
An event is a signal that records something that happened at a particular time as a single item, such as a deployment or a change in a monitor's state. Its role differs from metrics, which track numeric trends, and logs, which retain processing details; it is a clue that ties a change seen on a graph to "when what was changed."
Platform and pricingF
Facet
A marker registered on a tag or attribute of logs that have entered a log index, declaring it as something used for analysis. It works not as a required condition for search but as a marker that appears in autocomplete and in the choices for aggregation, and it determines how fast an investigation goes.
Log managementH
Host
A unit that refers to a single instance of a physical or virtual operating system. In Datadog Infrastructure Monitoring, this is the basic unit for counting what is monitored.
Infrastructure monitoringI
Ingestion Controls
The mechanism that decides which of the traces your applications send to Datadog are actually ingested. Even if you reduce the ingested volume, APM metrics are still calculated from all traces.
APM and tracingL
Log Index
A container that decides which of the collected logs are stored in a searchable state. Because retention in days and the daily limit are set per index, the Log Management bill is largely determined by how you design this.
Log managementLog Pipeline
The process in which Datadog passes received logs through processors in order, extracts attributes from the body, and shapes them into a form usable for search and aggregation. Every arriving log is matched against the filters of all pipelines, and the processing of the matching ones is applied.
Log managementM
Metric
A metric is a measurement that pairs a measured numeric value with the time it was measured and the tags that describe what was measured. Each individual record is stored as a time series, a sequence of points ordered by time, and because it works equally well for graphing, aggregation, and threshold evaluation, it forms the foundation of monitoring that tracks the state of a system.
Metrics and monitoringMonitor
In Datadog, a monitor is a single definition that bundles "notify me when this condition is met" as a pair of an evaluation expression and a notification. The unit at which an alert fires is this monitor.
Monitors and alertsO
Observability
Refers to the ability to analyze and measure what is happening inside a system based on the outputs the system emits externally. It is not the name of a tool but a word that expresses the degree to which a system possesses this property.
Observability fundamentalsR
Retention
The period during which data you sent is stored and available for search and display. In Datadog there is no single shared value; separate defaults are defined per target such as metrics, logs, spans, and running processes.
Platform and pricingS
SLO (Service Level Objective)
A target that declares how far a service's reliability must be met, as a percentage over a period; as the flip side of the target, the amount of failure you can tolerate is decided at the same time.
Monitors and alertsSpan
A unit that records when a single piece of work within a process started and when it ended. These units nest and stack up into a single trace, so how finely you can pinpoint the cause of slowness is decided by how you capture spans.
APM and tracingT
Tag
A marker you attach to monitored objects so you can later call up everything with the same property at once. In Datadog the basic form is <code>key:value</code>.
Platform and pricingTrace
A record for following the time a single request took to process and its outcome. In Datadog APM, one or more spans come together to form a single trace.
APM and tracing