The Datadog Operator is an open source Kubernetes Operator that enables you to deploy and configure the Datadog Agent in a Kubernetes environment. This guide describes how to use the Operator to deploy the Datadog Agent.

Prerequisites

• Kubernetes v1.20.X+
• Helm for deploying the Datadog Operator
• The Kubernetes command-line tool, kubectl, for installing the Datadog Agent

Installation and deployment

1. Install the Datadog Operator with Helm:

   helm repo add datadog https://helm.datadoghq.com helm install my-datadog-operator datadog/datadog-operator 

2. Create a Kubernetes secret with your API key:

   kubectl create secret generic datadog-secret --from-literal api-key=<DATADOG_API_KEY> 

   Replace <DATADOG_API_KEY> with your Datadog API key.

   Note: Add an application key for autoscaling using the external metrics server by adding --from-literal app-key=<DATADOG_APP_KEY>

3. Create a datadog-agent.yaml file with the spec of your DatadogAgent deployment configuration. The following sample configuration enables metrics, logs, and APM:

   apiVersion: datadoghq.com/v2alpha1 kind: DatadogAgent metadata:   name: datadog spec:   global:     site: datadoghq.com     credentials:       apiSecret:         secretName: datadog-secret         keyName: api-key   features:     apm:       enabled: true     logCollection:       enabled: true 

   Note: Make sure to set site to the Datadog site you are using (for instance, datadoghq.eu).

   For all configuration options, see the Operator configuration spec.

4. Deploy the Datadog Agent:

   kubectl apply -f /path/to/your/datadog-agent.yaml 

Running Agents in a single container

By default, the Datadog Operator creates an Agent DaemonSet with pods running multiple Agent containers. Datadog Operator v1.4.0 introduces a configuration which allows users to run Agents in a single container. In order to avoid elevating privileges for all Agents in the single container, this feature is only applicable when system-probe or security-agent is not required. For more details, see Running as an unprivileged user on the Agent Data Security page.

To enable this feature add global.containerStrategy: single to the DatadogAgent manifest:

  apiVersion: datadoghq.com/v2alpha1   kind: DatadogAgent   metadata:     name: datadog   spec:     global:       containerStrategy: single       credentials:         apiSecret:           secretName: datadog-secret           keyName: api-key     features:       apm:         enabled: true       logCollection:         enabled: true

Note: Running multiple Agent processes in a single container is discouraged in orchestrated environments such as Kubernetes. Pods running multiple processes need their lifecycles to be managed by a process manager, which is not directly controllable by Kubernetes and potentially leads to inconsistencies or conflicts in the container lifecycle management.

Validation

Use kubectl get daemonset and kubectl get pod -owide to validate your installation.

In a cluster with two worker Nodes, you should see Agent Pods created on each Node:

$ kubectl get daemonset NAME            DESIRED   CURRENT   READY   UP-TO-DATE   AVAILABLE   NODE SELECTOR   AGE datadog-agent   2         2         2       2            2           <none>          5m30s  $ kubectl get pod -owide NAME                                         READY   STATUS    RESTARTS   AGE     IP            NODE agent-datadog-operator-d897fc9b-7wbsf        1/1     Running   0          1h      10.244.2.11   kind-worker datadog-agent-k26tp                          1/1     Running   0          5m59s   10.244.2.13   kind-worker datadog-agent-zcxx7                          1/1     Running   0          5m59s   10.244.1.7    kind-worker2 

Cleanup

The following commands delete all Kubernetes resources created in this guide:

kubectl delete datadogagent datadog helm delete my-datadog-operator 

Further Reading

Additional helpful documentation, links, and articles:

Datadog OperatorDOCUMENTATION Datadog Operator: Advanced InstallationSOURCE CODE Datadog Operator: ConfigurationSOURCE CODE