Configuring Datadog APM could be tedious as many different parts can go wrong:

• Networking
• Kubernetes
• Datadog
• Service configuration

This simple example shows a end to end working example on how to test Datadog Application Performance Monitoring (APM) for a python web application deployed to Kubernetes.

Build and run locally

If you don't want to change the application but just test that Datadog works, skip this section.

1. Build the image

   docker build . -t hello-app-datadog:v1

2. Run the hello app

   docker run -p 80:80 hello-app-datadog:v1

3. Test

   curl http://localhost:80/

Install Datadog in Kubernetes

If you don't have a Cloud provider and a Kubernetes cluster, using opta will create them for you.

If you have a Kubernetes cluster, you can either use the opta command or the helm command.

Using Opta

For datadog installation, just add this line to your environment config file.

# opta.yaml

modules:
  # add this line below
  - type: datadog

Run opta, this will ask for your datadog API key:

opta apply -c opta/opta.yaml

The default configuration comes with the admission controller so you don't have to do anything else.

Using Helm

If you already have a Kubernetes cluster, you can also install Datadog with Helm.

helm repo add datadog https://helm.datadoghq.com
helm repo update

# deploy using default values
helm install datadog -f dd-opta-trimmed.yaml  --set datadog.apiKey=$DD_API_KEY --set datadog.appKey=$DD_APP_KEY \
   --create-namespace -n datadog datadog/datadog

If you want to enable the admission controller (recommended to keep your manifest files clean of datadog information), set a custom values file such as:

# custom-values.yaml
clusterAgent:
  admissionController:
    enabled: true

And specify this file when running helm.

helm install datadog -f custom-values.yaml ...

Deploy the test service

The docker image for this service is published to github container registry: ghcr.io/run-x/RemyDeWolf/hello-app-datadog:main

Using Opta

opta apply -c opta/hello.yaml

Note: Opta will also configure the networking (service mesh and load balancing).

Once deployed you can check the logs. If there are any Datadog errors, you will see them there.

opta logs -c opta/hello.yaml

Using kubectl

If you want to manually deploy the service using kubectl.

# this will deploy to the default namespace, change this as needed
kubectl apply -f k8s/deployment.yaml
deployment.apps/hello-app-datadog created

Once deployed you can check the logs. If there are any Datadog errors, you will see them there.

kubectl logs -f deploy/hello-app-datadog

Test APM

Test APM on datadog, go to the APM page and check that the service is present.

Go Further

• Set up Datadog APM Official Guide
• Opta Official Github page