Send logs to Datadog logs

A simple guide to send logs to Datadog logs in just a few minutes.
type: tutorialdomain: sinkssink: datadog_logs

Logs are an essential part of observing any service; without them you'll have significant blind spots. But collecting and analyzing them can be a real challenge -- especially at scale. Not only do you need to solve the basic task of collecting your logs, but you must do it in a reliable, performant, and robust manner. Nothing is more frustrating than having your logs pipeline fall on it's face during an outage, or even worse, cause the outage!

Fear not! In this guide we'll build an observability pipeline that will send logs to Datadog logs.

Background

What is Datadog logs?

Datadog is a monitoring service for cloud-scale applications, providing monitoring of servers, databases, tools, and services, through a SaaS-based data analytics platform.

Strategy

How This Guide Works

We'll be using Vector to accomplish this task. Vector is a popular open-source observability data platform. It's written in Rust, making it lightweight, ultra-fast and highly reliable. And we'll be deploying Vector as a agent.

Vector daemon deployment strategyVector daemon deployment strategy
1. Your service logs to STDOUT
STDOUT follows the 12 factor principles.
2. STDOUT is captured
STDOUT is captured by your platform.
3. Vector collects & fans-out data
Vector will sends logs to [Datadog logs](https://docs.datadoghq.com/logs/).

What We'll Accomplish

We'll build an observability data platform that:

  • Collect your logs from one or more sources
  • Sends logs to Datadog logs.
    • Buffers data in-memory or on-disk for performance and durability.
    • Compresses data to optimize bandwidth.
    • Automatically retries failed requests, with backoff.
    • Securely transmits data via Transport Layer Security (TLS).
    • Batches data to maximize throughput.

All in just a few minutes!

Tutorial

  1. Install Vector

    curl --proto '=https' --tlsv1.2 -sSf https://sh.vector.dev | sh

  2. Configure Vector

    cat <<-'VECTORCFG' > ./vector.toml
    [sinks.out]
    type = "datadog_logs"
    inputs = [ "my-source-or-transform-id" ]
    api_key = "${DATADOG_API_KEY_ENV_VAR}"
    encoding.codec = "json"
    VECTORCFG

  3. Start Vector

    vector --config ./vector.toml

  4. Observe Vector

    vector top
    explain this command

Next Steps

Vector is powerful tool and we're just scratching the surface in this guide. Here are a few pages we recommend that demonstrate the power and flexibility of Vector:

Vector Github repo 4k
Vector is free and open-source!
Vector getting started series
Get setup in just a few minutes
Vector documentation
Everything you need to know about Vector