May 2019 Summaries

CoreDNS is a DNS server that provides name resolution and service discovery for microservice-based applications, particularly within Kubernetes clusters. It is customizable, allowing adjustments beyond simple DNS lookups, and can now be monitored using Datadog's new integration, which provides insights into CoreDNS metrics to better understand Kubernetes cluster activities. Key metrics include request rates, DNS latency, error codes, and resource usage, all of which help in identifying performance issues and optimizing configurations. Users can also monitor how CoreDNS handles cache requests, forwards them to upstream DNS servers, and responds to errors. Custom plugins can be integrated to extend CoreDNS functionality, and their metrics can be tracked in Datadog dashboards for a comprehensive view of DNS activity. To start monitoring, users need to enable the Prometheus plugin, allowing metric collection and integration into Datadog for enhanced performance visibility across Kubernetes environments.

In this article, we discuss methods to access and view EKS cluster metrics. These metrics are categorized into three groups: Kubernetes cluster state metrics, resource metrics at the node and container level, and AWS service metrics. The article provides detailed instructions on how to use kubectl commands and Kubernetes Dashboard for monitoring purposes. It also explains how to monitor AWS services using CloudWatch. Finally, it emphasizes the importance of a dedicated monitoring service that can aggregate metrics from all sources and provide comprehensive visibility into your cluster's performance.

Last month, Datadog held its customer summit in Seattle where members discussed new developments in monitoring dynamic infrastructure and applications. The event included technical talks, hands-on workshops, and small-group Q&A sessions covering topics such as distributed tracing, APM, automated browser tests, advanced logging features, and more. Notable speakers shared their experiences on various aspects of the Datadog platform, including application-level metrics, deployment strategies, service mesh implementation, performance monitoring, and tracking SLIs and SLOs. The summit aimed to provide insights into new capabilities and updates while fostering a community of users who can learn from each other's experiences.

The Datadog Summit was held in Seattle last month, where the community discussed new developments in monitoring dynamic infrastructure and applications. The summit included technical talks, hands-on workshops, and Q&A sessions on various topics such as APM and distributed tracing, advances in log management, deploying new features without anxiety, application-level metrics, and achieving performance wins with Datadog. Product managers from Datadog announced exciting additions to the platform's APM and distributed tracing offerings, including support for new languages and a brand-new runtime metrics feature. The summit also featured talks on how to make deploys less scary, using strategies and tools like feature flags and dark launches, and how application-level metrics remain important even as infrastructure technologies evolve.

Canary releases offer a strategic method for safely updating large-scale production environments by gradually deploying updates and monitoring their effects, a process made easier by Microsoft's Azure Deployment Manager (ADM). ADM allows staged deployments with automated health checks, leveraging Datadog's monitoring capabilities to enhance the effectiveness and reliability of these updates. This integration enables users to configure Service Topologies and Rollouts, applying Datadog monitors to check the health of services at each deployment stage, preventing further rollouts in case of failures. By using composite monitors and tagging in Datadog, organizations can efficiently track deployment health and troubleshoot issues across various metrics and logs. As a launch partner, Datadog offers tools and documentation to facilitate the setup of ADM Rollouts, ensuring a safe deployment process in Azure environments, and encourages users to explore their services through a free trial.

Hyper-V is a hardware virtualization platform that creates and runs virtual machines on Windows host systems. It allocates resources from the physical hosts to the virtual machines it creates. Datadog's new integration allows users to monitor the health of every layer of their Hyper-V stack, including physical hosts, virtual machines, and applications running on them. Users can set up alerts for low host memory and monitor CPU workloads across both physical and virtual machines. Additionally, Windows Live Process monitoring provides real-time insights into process-level resource usage within each virtual machine. Datadog's integration with Hyper-V is part of its growing list of 650+ integrations, including Microsoft Azure, IIS, and SQL Server.

Hyper-V is a hardware virtualization platform used to create and run virtual machines on Windows host systems. It allocates resources from the physical hosts it runs on to the virtual machines it creates, but if those resources are spread too thin, virtual machines may encounter slow performance and startup failures. With Datadog's integration, you can monitor the health of every layer of your Hyper-V stack, including physical hosts, virtual machines, and applications running on them. You can set up alerts to get notified when a host's available memory drops below a certain threshold or when a host is overloaded, allowing you to avoid excessive paging and prevent performance impairment. Datadog provides deep visibility into CPU workloads across physical and virtual machines, enabling you to graph real-time CPU usage across your Hyper-V infrastructure and set up alerts to notify you of potential issues. Additionally, Datadog's Live Process monitoring provides a granular view of process-level resource usage across each of your Hyper-V virtual machines, updated every two seconds, allowing you to monitor and optimize the performance of your Hyper-V environment alongside other parts of your Windows stack.