Datadog Agent auto-discovers all containers available by default. To restrict its discovery perimeter and limit data collection to a subset of containers only, include or exclude them through a dedicated configuration.
Note: The docker.containers.running, .stopped, .running.total, and .stopped.total metrics are not affected by these settings and always count all containers. This does not affect your per-container billing.
If running the Agent as a binary on a host, configure your Autodiscovery perimeter with the Host Agent tab instructions. If running the Agent as a container, configure your Autodiscovery perimeter with the Containerized Agent Tab instructions.
Exclude containers from the Agent Autodiscovery perimeter with an exclude rule based on their name or image to collect NO DATA out of it. If a container matches an exclude rule, it won’t be included unless it first matches an include rule.
Note: Exclude rules support regexes, and are defined as a list of comma-separated strings.
To remove a given Docker container with the image <IMAGE_NAME> from Autodiscovery, add the following configuration block in the Agent datadog.yaml configuration file:
ac_exclude: [image:<IMAGE_NAME>]To remove a given Docker container with the name <NAME> from Autodiscovery, add the following configuration block in the Agent datadog.yaml configuration file:
ac_exclude: [name:<NAME>]To remove a given Docker container with the image <IMAGE_NAME> from Autodiscovery, add the following environment variable to the Datadog Agent:
DD_AC_EXCLUDE = "image:<IMAGE_NAME>"To remove a given Docker container with the name <NAME> from Autodiscovery, add the following environment variable to the Datadog Agent:
DD_AC_EXCLUDE = "name:<NAME>"For instance, use this excluding rule to exclude the Agent container itself:
DD_AC_EXCLUDE = "name:dd-agent"Another example, the following configuration instructs the Agent to ignore some containers from Docker Cloud:
DD_AC_EXCLUDE = "image:dockercloud/network-daemon, image:dockercloud/cleanup, image:dockercloud/logrotate, image:dockercloud/events, image:dockercloud/ntpd"Note: You can also use a regex to ignore them all: DD_AC_EXCLUDE = "image:dockercloud/*"
Include containers from the Agent Autodiscovery perimeter with an include rule based on their name or image to collect data ONLY from those containers. If a container matches an include rule, it’s always included in the Autodiscovery perimeter.
Note: Include rules support regexes, and are defined as a list of comma-separated strings.
To include a given Docker container with the image <IMAGE_NAME> from Autodiscovery, add the following configuration block in the Agent datadog.yaml configuration file:
ac_include: [image:<IMAGE_NAME>]To include a given Docker container with the name <NAME> from Autodiscovery, add the following configuration block in the Agent datadog.yaml configuration file:
ac_include: [name:<NAME>]To remove a given Docker container with the image <IMAGE_NAME> from Autodiscovery, add the following environment variable to the Datadog Agent:
DD_AC_INCLUDE = "image:<IMAGE_NAME>"To remove a given Docker container with the name <NAME> from Autodiscovery, add the following environment variable to the Datadog Agent:
DD_AC_INCLUDE = "name:<NAME>"For example, if you only want to monitor ubuntu or debian images, and exclude the rest, specify:
DD_AC_EXCLUDE = "image:.*"
DD_AC_INCLUDE = "image:ubuntu, image:debian"
Datadog Agent excludes Kubernetes and OpenShift pause containers by default. They are still counted in the container count like excluded containers.
To disable this behavior and include pause containers in the Autodiscovery perimeter, set the parameter exclude_pause_container to false in the Agent datadog.yaml configuration file or through the Agent environment variable DD_EXCLUDE_PAUSE_CONTAINER="false"
Additional helpful documentation, links, and articles:
