Agent Flare

A flare allows you to send necessary troubleshooting information to the Datadog support team.

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A flare gathers all of the Agent’s configuration files and logs into an archive file. It removes sensitive information, including passwords, API keys, Proxy credentials, and SNMP community strings. If APM is enabled, the flare includes tracer debug logs when available.

The Datadog Agent is completely open source, which allows you to verify the code’s behavior. If needed, the flare can be reviewed prior to sending since the flare prompts a confirmation before uploading it.

When contacting Datadog Support with Remote Configuration enabled for an Agent, the Support team may initiate a flare from your environment in order to better assist you in a timely manner. Flares provide troubleshooting information to Datadog Support to help you resolve your issue.

Send a flare from the Datadog site

Sending an Agent Flare from Fleet Automation is not supported for this site.

To send a flare from the Datadog site, make sure you’ve enabled Fleet Automation and Remote configuration on the Agent.

To send a remote flare:

  1. From the Fleet Automation page, select an Agent that requires support.
  2. Click Support.
  3. Click Send Support Ticket.
  4. Provide an existing Zendesk support ticket number. If you don’t provide a ticket number, one is created on your behalf.
  5. Enable Debug mode to allow Datadog support staff to troubleshoot your issue faster. The log level is reset to its previous configuration after you send the flare.
  6. If you are troubleshooting your application, enable application tracer level logs to be included in the flare.
  7. Click Send Ticket.
The Send Ticket button launches a form to send a flare for an existing or new support ticket

Send a flare using the flare command

Use the flare subcommand to send a flare. In the commands below, replace <CASE_ID> with your Datadog support case ID if you have one, then enter the email address associated with it.

If you don’t have a case ID, enter your email address used to log in to Datadog to create a new support case.

Confirm the upload of the archive to immediately send it to Datadog support.

    PlatformCommand
    AIXdatadog-agent flare <CASE_ID>
    Dockerdocker exec -it dd-agent agent flare <CASE_ID>
    macOSdatadog-agent flare <CASE_ID> or via the web GUI
    CentOSsudo datadog-agent flare <CASE_ID>
    Debiansudo datadog-agent flare <CASE_ID>
    Kuberneteskubectl exec -it <AGENT_POD_NAME> -- agent flare <CASE_ID>
    Fedorasudo datadog-agent flare <CASE_ID>
    Redhatsudo datadog-agent flare <CASE_ID>
    Susesudo datadog-agent flare <CASE_ID>
    Sourcesudo datadog-agent flare <CASE_ID>
    WindowsConsult the dedicated Windows documentation
    HerokuConsult the dedicated Heroku documentation
    PCFsudo /var/vcap/jobs/dd-agent/packages/dd-agent/bin/agent/agent flare <CASE_ID>

    Dedicated containers

    When using Agent v7.19+ and using the Datadog Helm Chart with the latest version or a DaemonSet where the Datadog Agent and Trace Agent are in separate containers, you deploy an Agent Pod containing:

    • One container with the Agent process (Agent + Log Agent)
    • One container with the process-agent process
    • One container with the trace-agent process
    • One container with the system-probe process

    To get a flare from each container, run the following commands:

    Agent

    kubectl exec -it <AGENT_POD_NAME> -c agent -- agent flare <CASE_ID>

    Process Agent

    kubectl exec -it <AGENT_POD_NAME> -c process-agent -- agent flare <CASE_ID> --local

    Trace Agent

    kubectl exec -it <AGENT_POD_NAME> -c trace-agent -- agent flare <CASE_ID> --local

    Security Agent

    kubectl exec -it <AGENT_POD_NAME> -c security-agent -- security-agent flare <CASE_ID>

    System probe

    The system-probe container cannot send a flare so get container logs instead:

    kubectl logs <AGENT_POD_NAME> -c system-probe > system-probe.log

    ECS Fargate

    When using ECS Fargate platform v1.4.0, ECS tasks and services can be configured to allow access to running Linux containers by enabling Amazon ECS Exec. After enabling Amazon ECS exec, run the following command to send a flare:

    aws ecs execute-command --cluster <CLUSTER_NAME> \
    --task <TASK_ID> \
    --container datadog-agent \
    --interactive \
    --command "agent flare <CASE_ID>"

    Note: ECS Exec can only be enabled for new tasks. You must recreate existing tasks to use ECS Exec.

    PlatformCommand
    Kuberneteskubectl exec -n <NAMESPACE> -it <CLUSTER_POD_NAME> -- datadog-cluster-agent flare <CASE_ID>
    Cloud Foundry/var/vcap/packages/datadog-cluster-agent/datadog-cluster-agent-cloudfoundry flare -c /var/vcap/jobs/datadog-cluster-agent/config <CASE_ID>

    Manual submission

    The Agent flare protocol collects configurations and logs into an archive file first located in the local /tmp directory. Manually obtain this file and provide it to support if there are any issues with Agent connectivity.

    Kubernetes

    To obtain the archive file in Kubernetes, use the kubectl command:

    kubectl cp datadog-<pod-name>:tmp/datadog-agent-<date-of-the-flare>.zip flare.zip -c agent

    Further Reading

    Additional helpful documentation, links, and articles:

    Agent Debug ModeDOCUMENTATION more more Get the Status of an Agent CheckDOCUMENTATION more more