August 2019 Summaries

Collecting observability data like metrics, traces, and logs is crucial in identifying bottlenecks and performance issues in .NET applications. Datadog enables seamless navigation between these types of data to help find the source of problems and enact timely resolutions. By automatically correlating logs and traces at the individual request level, developers can efficiently troubleshoot issues by browsing aggregated performance metrics, inspecting end-to-end traces, and drilling down to correlated logs for richer context. This auto-correlation feature helps identify, investigate, and resolve performance problems faster without switching tools or contexts.

Datadog enables seamless pivoting between metrics, logs, and traces from any application or infrastructure component. Automatically correlating .NET logs with distributed traces helps identify performance problems by providing end-to-end visibility into request execution, allowing for faster investigation and resolution of issues such as latency spikes and excessive database queries. Datadog's bi-directional connection between logs and traces enables users to filter, contextualize, and troubleshoot their .NET applications more efficiently.

Datadog Summit, an event celebrating community and knowledge sharing among engineers, developers, and other professionals in the tech industry, will take place on September 17 in Berlin. Attendees can expect to learn from experts who have transformed their organizations through observability cultures, gain practical advice for improving system performance and reliability, and participate in hands-on workshops covering various topics such as infrastructure monitoring, distributed tracing, log analytics, and more. The event will be held at Haus Ungarn near Alexanderplatz and is free to attend, but RSVP is required due to limited space.

Datadog is hosting its next summit on September 17 in Berlin, bringing together the Datadog community and staff for a celebration of sharing knowledge and expertise. The event features talks from engineers and developers who have successfully implemented observability practices in their organizations, as well as hands-on workshops covering topics such as infrastructure monitoring, distributed tracing, log analytics, and reliability. These workshops provide practical advice on how to use Datadog's platform to improve system performance and reliability, with a focus on real-world insights and real-time feedback from the community. The summit also includes interactive chaos experiments to learn from failure and improve resilience. With limited space available, attendees are encouraged to RSVP in advance to secure their spot at this free event.

Akamai mPulse is a real user monitoring (RUM) service that provides businesses with deep visibility into end user experience across their websites or applications. By integrating mPulse with Datadog, organizations can analyze and correlate RUM metrics alongside performance data from CDN and backend infrastructure to pinpoint slow resources and track user engagement. The integration includes a wide range of metrics such as page load times, first byte response time, and more. It also allows businesses to monitor page group traffic and investigate the source of any user-facing slowdowns. By keeping a finger on the pulse of their web stack, organizations can optimize end user experience and improve website performance.

With Akamai's mPulse integration, businesses can gain deep visibility into end user experience across their websites or applications. By collecting high-granularity metrics directly from users' browsers and analyzing that data to pinpoint slow resources, organizations can track user engagement and make decisions to improve product performance. The integration provides comprehensive visibility across the web stack by correlating RUM metrics with performance data from CDNs and backend infrastructure. This allows businesses to investigate the source of any user-facing slowdown and take steps to optimize their products, such as setting up alerts for slow page load times or monitoring page group traffic. With this enhanced visibility, organizations can prioritize heavily trafficked parts of their site and troubleshoot issues more effectively.

The new copy and paste feature in Datadog allows users to easily share data across dashboards, Notebooks, accounts, emails, and other communication channels like Slack. Users can now duplicate widgets by hovering over them or clicking on the share icon, then pasting them into desired locations using Cmd+V (Ctrl+V for Windows and Linux). This feature enables users to quickly replicate useful visualizations across different accounts while keeping data isolated. Additionally, multiple widgets can be copied and pasted simultaneously, providing a more comprehensive view of situations. The auto-generated links in shared widgets maintain the same time period displayed when originally copied, allowing for seamless collaboration and troubleshooting efforts.

You can now easily copy and paste widgets within Datadog across dashboards, Notebooks, and accounts, as well as share them via emails and other communication channels like Slack. This feature makes it easy to duplicate widgets across dashboards and multiple Datadog accounts, while keeping data isolated, and enables you to use the same types of visualizations in different accounts. You can also copy and paste multiple widgets at a time, giving colleagues a more comprehensive picture of the situation at hand. The auto-generated link will scope the graph to the same time period displayed in the widget when it was originally copied, allowing for easy troubleshooting efforts or postmortems.

Harbor is an open-source registry for container images and Helm charts developed by VMware and hosted by the CNCF. It offers several advantages over Docker's default registry, such as role-based access control, security scanning, and resource replication. Datadog has introduced a new integration for Harbor that allows users to monitor its health and performance alongside their containerized applications and infrastructure. The integration includes tracking disk usage, notifications if Harbor goes down, automatic tracking of health checks, and log analysis for faster troubleshooting. This helps ensure uptime for self-hosted registries and the services that depend on them.

Harbor is an open source registry for container images and Helm charts developed by VMware and hosted by the CNCF. Hosting Harbor within your infrastructure provides several advantages over using a default Docker registry, including role-based access control, security scanning, and replication of resources between instances. Monitoring Harbor's disk usage is crucial to ensure that it has sufficient storage capacity. Datadog's integration with Harbor allows for tracking health and performance alongside containerized applications and infrastructure, providing real-time monitoring and notification capabilities. Additionally, the integration offers features such as forecasting algorithms to visualize projected disk usage, service checks for API availability, automatic health check tracking, log analysis, and alerting for component failures. This enables users to ensure uptime for their self-hosted registry and monitor all containerized services in one place.

Transport Layer Security (TLS) is a cryptographic protocol used for secure network communication between web servers and browsers. Datadog's new integration allows users to monitor the status of TLS certificates along with other components of their web stack, ensuring private, reliable, and secure network communication. The integration includes alerting on expiring TLS certificates, tracking certificate validity and expiration dates, and customizing dashboards for comprehensive visibility into TLS and other web services.

To establish secure network communication between web servers and browsers, Transport Layer Security (TLS) is used. TLS has been the primary security strategy since 2015, replacing its predecessor Secure Sockets Layer (SSL). With Datadog's new integration, you can monitor the status of TLS certificates along with your web stack to ensure private, reliable, and secure network communication. Automatically getting alerted whenever a TLS certificate is close to expiration date gives enough time to renew without gaps in coverage. The Datadog Agent automatically runs checks on your TLS certificates and displays their real-time status in an out-of-the-box dashboard, helping you troubleshoot and review your TLS configuration. You can also track the expiration status of your TLS certificates with customizable dashboards that include TLS status widgets alongside health and performance data from other components of your web stack. With Datadog's integration, you'll gain visibility into TLS along with over 850 other technologies, including MongoDB, NGINX, and Apache.

Datadog recently held its first "Learning Week" at their Paris office, offering a variety of sessions for employees to explore new interests and learn new skills. The week-long event included topics such as scaling an engineering team, understanding the day-to-day operations of other teams within the company, public speaking, and navigating cultural differences across international offices. Participation was optional, but 87% of the Paris office attended at least one session. Following the success of Learning Week, Datadog plans to continue improving and expanding learning and development initiatives, including providing full access to on-demand e-learning platforms, bringing in external speakers, and building personalized, on-demand training opportunities.

Datadog's Paris office recently held its first-ever "Learning Week" to foster a learning-oriented culture, providing fun, engaging, and relevant experiences for employees to explore various interests and learn new skills. The event aimed to go beyond standard training by allowing everyone to propose session ideas and take the lead in teaching others, making participation opt-in and offering multiple sessions on various topics. Around 20 different sessions were offered, covering a wide range of formats and topics, including firsthand experience in solving technical challenges, developing individual skills, and showcasing how other teams work. The event was well-received, with 87 percent of participants opting in to at least one session, and employees provided valuable feedback on what kinds of learning opportunities would be most valuable in the future, which will shape upcoming initiatives such as providing full access to e-learning platforms and building personalized training opportunities.

Daniel, a hardware hacker in residence at Balena, shares insights into his career and projects, highlighting the integration of software, electronics, and IoT. Having transitioned from web development to hardware design, he now focuses on creating innovative IoT projects using Balena's platform, which supports the management of IoT devices through technologies like Docker. One notable project involved connecting IoT devices to Datadog for efficient monitoring and management. Daniel emphasizes the benefits of remote work, which allows him to explore different cultures while pursuing his passion for electronics. He advocates for flexible work environments, supporting both office and remote settings, and is currently exploring UPS options to enhance device reliability.

Daniel Andrade, a hardware hacker in residence at Balena, shares his journey from working on mood lamps in 2008 to his current role, where he combines his passion for electronics and web development through IoT projects. He explains how Balena's platform, which began by porting Docker to Raspberry Pi and ARM processors, now supports managing fleets of IoT devices via balenaCloud. Demonstrating the platform's capabilities, Daniel discusses projects like a Bitcoin traffic light and integrating IoT devices with Datadog for monitoring purposes. Emphasizing the benefits of remote work, Daniel describes his experiences traveling while working, advocating for flexible work environments that cater to diverse needs. He also mentions his ongoing work on alternative UPS solutions for enhanced device reliability. The interview highlights his enthusiasm for building projects, engaging with the community, and promoting Balena's platform through tutorials and forum support.

The second annual Dash conference was held in New York City, featuring keynotes from Datadog co-founder and CTO Alexis Lê-Quôc on the importance of observability in managing complex systems. Several new product features were announced, including Metrics without Limits™ and Tracing without Limits™, Network Performance Monitoring, Metrics from Logs and Log Rehydration™, and SLO Manager. Breakout sessions covered topics such as transformations, performance, and teams, with speakers from various organizations sharing their experiences and insights. Interactive workshops provided hands-on experience in serverless technologies, ensuring reliability with SLOs, Kubernetes deep dives, and Datadog 101 training. The event concluded with a look forward to next year's Dash conference.

Datadog co-founder and CTO Alexis Lê-Quôc kicked off the conference by explaining the driving forces behind Datadog's new features, which aim to help users eliminate blind spots, get helpful context for troubleshooting, and seamlessly surface insights that would otherwise go unnoticed. The company also partnered with several customers to design and develop expansions to its monitoring platform, including new features such as Metrics without Limits, Tracing without Limits, Network Performance Monitoring, Metrics from Logs and Log Rehydration, and SLO Manager. These new features were announced during the conference, which featured a wide range of breakout sessions and hands-on workshops on topics such as serverless migrations, observability challenges, and Kubernetes deep dives. The event was attended by members of the Datadog community, including customers from organizations like Capital One, Hulu, and Thomson Reuters, who shared their experiences with the company's products and features.