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Reviewer 76 - PeerSpot reviewer
Vice President of SaaS Infrastructure at a tech services company with 51-200 employees
User
Enhances efficiency with robust alerting and visualization tools
Pros and Cons
  • "The real-time data helps us make informed decisions and optimize our operations, ultimately enhancing our overall efficiency and performance."
  • "The pricing model can be quite complex and might benefit from more flexible options tailored to different organizational needs."

What is our primary use case?

Our primary use case for Datadog is to monitor and manage our fully cloud-native infrastructure. We utilize DataDog to gain real-time visibility into our cloud environments, ensuring that all our services are running smoothly and efficiently. 

The platform’s extensive integration capabilities allow us to seamlessly track performance metrics across various cloud services, containers, and microservices. 

With Datadog’s robust alerting and visualization tools, we can proactively identify and resolve issues, minimizing downtime and optimizing our system’s performance. This has been crucial in maintaining the reliability and scalability of our cloud-native applications.

How has it helped my organization?

Datadog has significantly enhanced our organization’s operational efficiency and reliability. By providing real-time visibility into our cloud-native infrastructure, Datadog enables us to monitor performance metrics, detect anomalies, and resolve issues swiftly. 

The platform’s robust alerting system ensures that potential problems are addressed before they impact our services, reducing downtime and improving overall system stability. Additionally, Datadog’s comprehensive dashboards and reporting tools have streamlined our troubleshooting processes and facilitated better decision-making.

What is most valuable?

The most valuable feature of Datadog for our organization has been its real-time monitoring capabilities. This feature provides us with instant visibility into our cloud-native infrastructure, allowing us to track performance metrics and detect anomalies as they occur. The ability to monitor our systems in real-time means we can quickly identify and address issues before they escalate, minimizing downtime and ensuring the reliability of our services. 

Additionally, the real-time data helps us make informed decisions and optimize our operations, ultimately enhancing our overall efficiency and performance.

What needs improvement?

While Datadog has been instrumental in enhancing our operational efficiency, there are areas where it could be improved. 

One area is the user interface, which could be more intuitive and user-friendly, especially for new users. 

Additionally, the pricing model can be quite complex and might benefit from more flexible options tailored to different organizational needs. 

For future releases, it would be beneficial to include more advanced machine learning capabilities for predictive analytics, helping us anticipate issues before they occur. 

More third-party tools would also be valuable additions.

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For how long have I used the solution?

I've used the solution for six years.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

DataDog has proven to be a highly stable solution for our monitoring needs. Throughout our usage, we have experienced minimal downtime and consistent performance, even during peak traffic periods. The platform’s reliability ensures that we can continuously monitor our cloud-native infrastructure without interruptions, which is crucial for maintaining the health and performance of our services.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

DataDog’s scalability has been impressive and instrumental in supporting our growing cloud-native infrastructure. The platform effortlessly handles increased workloads and scales alongside our expanding services without compromising performance. Its ability to integrate with a wide range of cloud services and technologies ensures that as we grow, DataDog continues to provide comprehensive monitoring and insights.

How are customer service and support?

Our experience with Datadog’s customer service and support has been exceptional. The support team is highly responsive and knowledgeable, providing timely assistance whenever we’ve encountered issues or had questions. 

Their proactive approach to offering solutions and guidance has been invaluable in helping us maximize the platform’s capabilities.

How would you rate customer service and support?

Positive

How was the initial setup?

The setup is straightforward.

What about the implementation team?

We handled the setup in-house.

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

The pricing model can be quite complex and might benefit from more flexible options tailored to different organizational needs.

What other advice do I have?

One area is the user interface, which could be more intuitive and user-friendly, especially for new users.

Which deployment model are you using for this solution?

Public Cloud
Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
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Senior Site Reliability Engineer at a comms service provider with 501-1,000 employees
Real User
Great centralized dashboards and telemetry capabilities with a helpful visualization of performance metrics
Pros and Cons
  • "Datadog has proven to be easy to set up and legible for both development and operational teams."
  • "If there were a more cost-effective manner of deploying the tool, we'd be more likely to adopt it more widely."

What is our primary use case?

We primarily use the solution for centralized dashboarding and telemetry viewing for teams across the organization. 

We're focused on ensuring that both development teams and leadership can reasonably gain insights into the status of various systems. 

At the end of the day, managing various dashboards and metrics aggregators like Prometheus, Kubernetes server, AWS Cloudwatch, and Grafana have lead to some confusion, and we've had issues with teams not knowing where their data exists and where they can view their system metrics. 

Datadog has proven to be easy to set up and legible for both development and operational teams.

How has it helped my organization?

The solution has been useful in generally ensuring that teams are able to better visualize and think about their application's impact on data centers/cloud performance. Having centralized tooling for observability means that each team can be on the same page when discussing monitoring. 

There have been some issues where teams have been unable to find metrics within the tool properly and some behaviors with the tagging and grouping functionality that seem not to be as easy to understand as one may expect. That said, overall, the experience has been one that is positive.

What is most valuable?

The dashboards have proven most helpful in ensuring that teams can track the performance of their apps. On a more practical scale, the alerts have proved invaluable for triaging and bringing services back online.

Being able to tie the alerts generated through Datadog monitors has allowed us to quickly and effectively respond to infrastructure and software issues that would have otherwise hamstrung the organization and prevented us from accomplishing our day-to-day tasks. This is naturally invaluable.

What needs improvement?

I'm sure that this is said all the time, however, the pricing model has led us to restrict the usage of the service. If there were a more cost-effective manner of deploying the tool, we'd be more likely to adopt it more widely. 

Aside from the cost, the nature of the tagging and grouping features within the monitoring dashboards have often caused headaches when creating new dashboards for aggregate services and infrastructure stacks. It would be nice to ensure that this feature is supported long-term and brought with easier accessibility.

For how long have I used the solution?

I've been using the solution for three years.

Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

Datadog is easy to use and generally looks great from a customer standpoint. The ability to export metrics all into a central location was crucial.

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

Datadog is very expensive for smaller organizations. The pricing model might be restrictive until the organization reaches a certain size.

Which other solutions did I evaluate?

Primarily we did an evaluation of other providers, such as AWS and GCP, outside of in-house solutions.

Which deployment model are you using for this solution?

Hybrid Cloud

If public cloud, private cloud, or hybrid cloud, which cloud provider do you use?

Amazon Web Services (AWS)
Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
PeerSpot user
Buyer's Guide
Datadog
November 2024
Learn what your peers think about Datadog. Get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions. Updated: November 2024.
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Cloud Engineer at a tech services company with 10,001+ employees
Real User
Intuitive with high availability and good integrations
Pros and Cons
  • "The network map is crucial in identifying bottlenecks and determining what needs more attention."
  • "To be very fair, I haven't had enough experience with Datadog to pick out improvements."

What is our primary use case?

We are using the solution for scaling up the website for market data applications. EC2 and Datadog have enabled high-level monitoring of underlying infra and services.

The Datadog profiler comes in handy to pinpoint issues with resource utilization during peak hours, and traces/log management helps narrow down the root cause.

The network map is crucial in identifying bottlenecks and determining what needs more attention.

Host map helps identify problematic hardware and devise ways to counter issues that arise during scaling, and deploying solutions on the cloud.

How has it helped my organization?

While my team is relatively new to Datadog, I already see immense value in switching over to Datadog as the primary APM and NPM tool.

The arsenal of features it offers is bound to come in a clutch when facing production issues, and when finding out what went wrong is crucial.

The network map has helped to figure out the golden signals and optimize the infrastructure.

The synthetics have helped ensure the high availability of arch functions as intended.

What is most valuable?

The network map is useful. With it, we have the ability to see the data flow across the entire network path across all the applications is highly valuable as the data from this service helps identify network bottlenecks, non-performant applications, and bad endpoints.

This is especially crucial for a high-availability website aimed at market data applications where low latency is crucial.

The host map gives a clear picture of the entire infrastructure, and the ability to switch between logs, metrics, and traces is very handy when it comes to debugging issues on the fly.

I love the ability to install the integrations and agents quickly. This is a well-made product.

What needs improvement?

To be very fair, I haven't had enough experience with Datadog to pick out improvements.

My involvement with Datadog has largely been positive. I love the simplicity and intuitiveness it offers - even for nontechnical folks who just might be starting out with developing technical chops in their domain.

For how long have I used the solution?

I've used the solution for three years.

Which deployment model are you using for this solution?

Hybrid Cloud

If public cloud, private cloud, or hybrid cloud, which cloud provider do you use?

Amazon Web Services (AWS)
Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
PeerSpot user
Associate at a financial services firm with 10,001+ employees
Real User
Great for debugging with good UI and helpful filtering capabilities
Pros and Cons
  • "It is easy to navigate the menu and create tests."
  • "This service could be less costly."

What is our primary use case?

We use the product for recording loggers on our various services across different teams. For example, we use logs to keep track of info logs for events and error logs to catch exceptions. 

When users ask us to investigate a situation, we use logs to keep track of events and where the user's code traveled to. We also use synthetic testing and monitoring features to keep track of our many alerts in the production and QA environments.

How has it helped my organization?

We use Datadog mainly for debugging purposes. For example, we use it to navigate where the code trace is when an issue arises due to its ability to search through the logs. 

We also use it to address user queries. Sometimes users would ask us a certain question concerning our codebase, we use Datadog to track the code stack and also use time monitoring to get an idea of the time frame around when the use case happened.

What is most valuable?

The feature I have found to be the most valuable is the filtering feature in logs. It is really easy to type plus and minus to filter out different logs. I use it to navigate the noise. 

I use synthetic tests as well. It is easy to navigate the menu and create tests. 

Much of the UI is very straightforward, and I do appreciate the ability to search for any documentation on the various features when I need to as well. The DASH monitoring boards are nice to give an overview of various performances and allow us to track use cases.

What needs improvement?

This service could be less costly. Right now, we only keep 15 days worth of logs since we want to be more economical in terms of cost. It would be nice if I had the option to monitor logs beyond 15 days. For APM traces, we only keep a year worth of traces. The UI can be a little more straightforward as well. I found it to have too many options.

For how long have I used the solution?

I've used the solution for three years.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

The stability is good.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

The scalability is good.

Which deployment model are you using for this solution?

Public Cloud

If public cloud, private cloud, or hybrid cloud, which cloud provider do you use?

Amazon Web Services (AWS)
Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
PeerSpot user
VP, Application support at a financial services firm with 10,001+ employees
Real User
Good service catalog and dashboard but the application performance monitoring module needs more functionality
Pros and Cons
  • "The service catalog helped improve our organization by giving a good view of the flow for our microservices applications."
  • "The dashboard could be improved. It would be helpful to get a view of specific things that we need to monitor for our application."

What is our primary use case?

We primarily use the solution for the service catalog.

We use this type of offering for our Microservices applications, and it gives a good view of flow. It is a must when we have different developers working on different services.

Having the trace and log features are useful for locating the microservice for the on-call person.

We would like to see some more useful applications for health monitoring where we can customize the cases based on data from the database.

It needs to have the facility to monitor data inside tables and the status of the UI.

How has it helped my organization?

The service catalog helped improve our organization by giving a good view of the flow for our microservices applications. It's important when we have different developers working on different services and having the trace and log features help the on-call person locate the microservice.

The application performance monitoring has also been useful. This module had a few functionalities that we needed for the application health check. This needs to have some more features to consolidate the view in one tree. We may need more of a one-stop shop on top of the dashboard, and that is missing in Datadog. We'd like to be able to scrap our existing monitoring tool.

What is most valuable?

The service catalog is very useful. We use this type of offering for our Microservices applications, and it gives a good view of flow. It is a must when we have different developers working on different services. Having the trace and log features have been useful in order to locate the microservice for the on-call person.

The dashboard is great. It is helpful to get a view of specific things that we need to monitor for our application. It has been a good way to watch specific things and add them together.

The application performance monitoring is an excellent aspect. This module had a few functionalities that we needed for the application health check. This needs to have some more features to consolidate the view into one tree, however.

What needs improvement?

The dashboard could be improved. It would be helpful to get a view of specific things that we need to monitor for our application. However, it was a good way to watch specific things and add them together.

The application performance monitoring module had very few functionalities that we needed for the application health check. This needs to have some more features to consolidate the view into one tree.

For how long have I used the solution?

I've used the solution for one month. 

Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

We previously used ITRS Geneos.

What other advice do I have?

We are using the latest version of the solution. 

I'd rate the solution seven out of ten. 

Which deployment model are you using for this solution?

Hybrid Cloud
Disclosure: My company has a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer: Provider
PeerSpot user
Software Developer at a pharma/biotech company with 51-200 employees
Real User
Top 20
Great for logging and monitoring with useful RUM capabilities
Pros and Cons
  • "The product has offered increased visibility via logging APM, metrics, RUM, etc."
  • "Even though it is powerful on its own, the UI-based design lacks elegance, efficiency, and complexity."

What is our primary use case?

We’re currently using logging, monitoring, metrics, APM, etc.

We've started to use e-SLOs, however, it takes a bit of time to work through those.

RUM has been very useful. I have used this in the past to debug problems in production, which has been g great.

We also want to start using synthetics and tracing more. 

Our application currently runs in many different environments based on our customers' requirements. This allows us to see everything in one place and filter by environment as required, which is extremely useful.

How has it helped my organization?

The product has offered increased visibility via logging APM, metrics, RUM, etc. We've gone from almost nothing to something that didn’t take a lot of time to set up. It has been great since we had so little time to spare.

As a startup, we have limited resources, and no one has enough time for anything. The fact that there are so many easy integrations and configurations by YAML makes everything easy to set up without needing a full-time employee. Instead, we're just configuring monitoring solutions which are very desirable.

What is most valuable?

The product is very useful for tracking down anything that’s gone wrong. I’ve been using it to make sure everything is working correctly after deployment and to make sure we don’t suffer performance degradation. We've found it great for tracking down anything that’s gone wrong in real-time.  

The logs are helpful. They are necessary for any application. Prior to this, our solution would have been to SSH into a machine and tail log files. This, however, is untenable for many reasons, and one of the first things I wanted to change.

The RUM has been great. Seeing real users interacting with our website is quite helpful.

What needs improvement?

Sometimes it’s difficult to customize certain queries to find specific things, specifically with the logging solution. I’ve used other logging platforms in the past that have extensive and mature query languages. This might not be super friendly to start out with, yet can be very powerful. 

I wish there was more of an emphasis on query languages instead of the UI-based tooling that Datadog provides. Even though it is powerful on its own, the UI-based design lacks the elegance, efficiency, and complexity.

For how long have I used the solution?

I've been using the solution for six months or so.

Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

I was previously familiar with Splunk.

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

I don’t handle pricing or licensing aspects. 

Which other solutions did I evaluate?

I did not evaluate other options. 

Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
PeerSpot user
Product SRE at a computer software company with 51-200 employees
Real User
Good dashboards and documentation with helpful Synthetics Tests
Pros and Cons
  • "Dashboards and their versatility are among the most valuable features."
  • "We would like to see some versioning system for the Synthetic Tests so that we could have a backup of our tests since they are time-consuming to make and very easy to damage in a moment of error."

What is our primary use case?

We use Datadog for application logs, error tracking, performance tracking, alerting, and overall production state surveillance. 

It helps us improve observability and ease of maintenance through better information for our support teams and their issue qualification. 

We also use dashboards to keep all the information at ready and easy to access. SLOs notably for our uptimes but also our feature usage. It also feeds our alerting for our on-call SREs into PagerDuty by launching alerts when specific parameters are exceeded.

How has it helped my organization?

Our usage of Datadog has allowed us to improve our observability at great lengths. We have been able to track pain points more easily with it, and be able to define custom metrics to track our user's usage of the features we roll out.

Being able to generate dashboards has given higher management a better view of our teams' work and has allowed for better client information by our sales team as they have a more transparent way ofdealing with our upcoming features.

What is most valuable?

Dashboards and their versatility are among the most valuable features. They allow us to have internal facing trackers of our application's issues, usages, and features. They also allow us to have a better understanding of how users react to new features, and to display more information to other teams or also clients through uptime SLOs, et cetera.

We also found the Synthetics Tests and especially the Browser Tests very helpful. It is a nicer way to create end-to-end tests in a more user-friendly way than through code. They are very valuable in saving time compared to code-based testing.

Documentation is also very clear and interesting.

What needs improvement?

We would like to see some versioning system for the Synthetic Tests so that we could have a backup of our tests since they are time-consuming to make and very easy to damage in a moment of error.

I look forward to seeing the next features that will be released.

For how long have I used the solution?

I have been using the product for a year and a half. The company has been using it for longer. I don't know the exact details.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

We have yet to have a large-scale problem with stability using Datadog. It's very satisfying.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

The scalability is very good.

How are customer service and support?

I've had only a few experiences with customer support, and it went well. They were fast!

How would you rate customer service and support?

Positive

Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

We did not use a different solution previously.

How was the initial setup?

I wasn't there for the initial setup.

What about the implementation team?

I wasn't there for the initial setup.

What was our ROI?

I cna't speak to the ROI.

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

I don't give advice regarding that.

Which other solutions did I evaluate?

I wasn't part of the decision-making process.

What other advice do I have?

It would be nicer if the pricing information was easier to find in the documentation. Sometimes it helps to get an overall idea of the cost of certain options.

Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
PeerSpot user
Lead Architect at a computer software company with 11-50 employees
Real User
Great search and filtering with useful troubleshooting capabilities
Pros and Cons
  • "We have found that we're able to get in and out of troubleshooting issues much more rapidly, which in turn, of course, enables us to spend more time on our products."
  • "I've found that the documentation is lacking in certain regards."

What is our primary use case?

We primarily use the solution for log management and application performance monitoring. We have been getting into using more solutions on Datadog, such as runbooks, monitoring, and dashboards. 

Another area that we've been investing some time in is the database monitoring. We've been able to get some relatively new employees onboarded into the tool, and they've been able to create some meaningful dashboards and reports without too much hand-holding at all. 

We plan on exploring the synthetics solution as well.

How has it helped my organization?

We are still working through fully rolling the service out to our employees. Those that have so far begun using it have found that it decreases the time required to investigate and troubleshoot production issues. 

We have found that we're able to get in and out of troubleshooting issues much more rapidly, which in turn, of course, enables us to spend more time on our products. We are still investigating other areas where other Datadog services could potentially be injected into our workflows.

What is most valuable?

Correlation between logs and APM has been the most important feature that we've found in Datadog to date. Previous solutions around log collection or APM instrumentation were rather cumbersome to connect. We previously needed to use different solutions for each which were not connected and required complex queries and a lot of time investment by key employees.

The search and filtering capabilities are rather helpful as well. The aggregation of all currently available properties has been great. It's excellent that available options drop as filters are refined. This allows for a nuanced view of available data.

We intend on exploring other products at Datadog, so this list may expand.

What needs improvement?

I've found that the documentation is lacking in certain regards. In going through sessions around certain services, the presenter expressed opinions on best practices that are not covered by documented examples. 

In taking these thoughts to the "experts," further research is required both by us and those working the table to come to a solution that meets our needs. If there were more documentation on best practices this may be easier to manage.

For how long have I used the solution?

I've been using the solution for ten years. 

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

The solution overall seems rather stable.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

The solution seems scalable. We just need to keep an eye on the costs as it scales.

How are customer service and support?

Customer support has been ok, yet not great. We've had ticket resolution drag on for weeks.

How would you rate customer service and support?

Neutral

Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

We previously used Scalyr for logs and switched due to APM linkage.

How was the initial setup?

The initial setup was straightforward.

What about the implementation team?

We handled hte setup in-house.

What was our ROI?

We've saved many developer hours by using Datadog. We plan on expanding our investment in this solution (and thus our return).

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

Pricing can be a bit of a sell internally. We've found it to be worth it, though.

Which other solutions did I evaluate?

We came from using other solutions.

Which deployment model are you using for this solution?

Public Cloud

If public cloud, private cloud, or hybrid cloud, which cloud provider do you use?

Amazon Web Services (AWS)
Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
PeerSpot user
Buyer's Guide
Download our free Datadog Report and get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions.
Updated: November 2024
Buyer's Guide
Download our free Datadog Report and get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions.