Installing the Datadog Operator

This document contains detailed information about installing the Datadog Operator. For basic installation instructions for the Datadog Agent on Kubernetes, see Install the Datadog Agent on Kubernetes.

Prerequisites

  • Kubernetes Cluster version >= v1.20.X: Tests were performed on Kubernetes versions >= 1.20.0. It is expected to work on versions >= v1.11.0, but for earlier versions the Operator may not work as expected because of limited CRD support.
  • Helm for deploying the Datadog Operator
  • kubectl CLI for installing the Datadog Agent

Install the Datadog Operator with Helm

You can deploy the Datadog Operator in your cluster using the Datadog Operator Helm chart:

helm repo add datadog https://helm.datadoghq.com
helm install my-datadog-operator datadog/datadog-operator

To customize the Operator configuration, create a values.yaml file that can override the default Helm chart values.

For instance:

image:
  tag: 1.2.0
datadogMonitor:
  enabled: true

Then, to update the Helm release, run:

helm upgrade my-datadog-operator datadog/datadog-operator -f values.yaml

Add credentials

  1. Create a Kubernetes Secret that contains your API and application keys.

    export DD_API_KEY=<YOUR_API_KEY>
export DD_APP_KEY=<YOUR_APP_KEY>

kubectl create secret generic datadog-operator-secret --from-literal api-key=$DD_API_KEY --from-literal app-key=$DD_APP_KEY

  2. Reference this Secret in your values.yaml file.

    apiKeyExistingSecret: datadog-operator-secret
appKeyExistingSecret: datadog-operator-secret
image:
  tag: 1.2.0
datadogMonitor:
  enabled: true

  3. Update the Helm release.

    helm upgrade my-datadog-operator datadog/datadog-operator -f values.yaml

Install the Datadog Operator with Operator Lifecycle Manager

Instructions for deploying the Datadog Operator with Operator Lifecycle Manager (OLM) are available at operatorhub.io.

Override the default Operator configuration with OLM

The Operator Lifecycle Manager framework allows overriding the default Operator configuration. See Subscription Config for a list of the supported installation configuration parameters.

For example, the following Operator Lifecycle Manager Subscription changes the Datadog Operator’s Pod resources:

apiVersion: operators.coreos.com/v1alpha1
kind: Subscription
metadata:
  name: my-datadog-operator
  namespace: operators
spec:
  channel: stable
  name: datadog-operator
  source: operatorhubio-catalog
  sourceNamespace: olm
  config:
    resources:
      requests:
        memory: "250Mi"
        cpu: "250m"
      limits:
        memory: "250Mi"
        cpu: "500m"

Add credentials

  1. Create a Kubernetes Secret that contains your API and application keys.

    export DD_API_KEY=<YOUR_API_KEY>
export DD_APP_KEY=<YOUR_APP_KEY>

kubectl create secret generic datadog-operator-secret --from-literal api-key=$DD_API_KEY --from-literal app-key=$DD_APP_KEY

  2. Add references to the Secret in the Datadog Operator Subscription resource instance.

    apiVersion: operators.coreos.com/v1alpha1
kind: Subscription
metadata:
  name: my-datadog-operator
  namespace: operators
spec:
  channel: stable
  name: datadog-operator
  source: operatorhubio-catalog
  sourceNamespace: olm
  config:
    env:
      - name: DD_API_KEY
        valueFrom:
          secretKeyRef: 
             key: api-key
             name: datadog-operator-secret
      - name: DD_APP_KEY
        valueFrom:
          secretKeyRef: 
            key: app-key
            name: datadog-operator-secret

Deploy the DatadogAgent custom resource managed by the Operator

After deploying the Datadog Operator, create the DatadogAgent resource that triggers the deployment of the Datadog Agent, Cluster Agent, and Cluster Checks Runners (if used) in your Kubernetes cluster. The Datadog Agent is deployed as a DaemonSet, running a pod on every node of your cluster.

  1. Create a Kubernetes secret with your API and application keys.

    export DD_API_KEY=<YOUR_API_KEY>
export DD_APP_KEY=<YOUR_APP_KEY>

kubectl create secret generic datadog-secret --from-literal api-key=<DATADOG_API_KEY> --from-literal app-key=<DATADOG_APP_KEY>

  2. Create a file with the spec of your DatadogAgent deployment configuration. The simplest configuration is:

    apiVersion: datadoghq.com/v1alpha1
kind: DatadogAgent
metadata:
  name: datadog
spec:
  credentials:
    apiSecret:
      secretName: datadog-secret
      keyName: api-key
    appSecret:
      secretName: datadog-secret
      keyName: app-key

  3. Deploy the Datadog Agent with the above configuration file:

    kubectl apply -f /path/to/your/datadog-agent.yaml

In a cluster with two worker nodes, you should see the Agent Pods created on each node.

$ kubectl get daemonset
NAME            DESIRED   CURRENT   READY   UP-TO-DATE   AVAILABLE   NODE SELECTOR   AGE
datadog-agent   2         2         2       2            2           <none>          5m30s

$ kubectl get pod -owide
NAME                                         READY   STATUS    RESTARTS   AGE     IP            NODE
agent-datadog-operator-d897fc9b-7wbsf        1/1     Running   0          1h      10.244.2.11   kind-worker
datadog-agent-k26tp                          1/1     Running   0          5m59s   10.244.2.13   kind-worker
datadog-agent-zcxx7                          1/1     Running   0          5m59s   10.244.1.7    kind-worker2

Tolerations

Update your datadog-agent.yaml file with the following configuration to add tolerations in the Daemonset.spec.template of your DaemonSet:

apiVersion: datadoghq.com/v1alpha1
kind: DatadogAgent
metadata:
  name: datadog
spec:
  credentials:
    apiSecret:
      secretName: datadog-secret
      keyName: api-key
    appSecret:
      secretName: datadog-secret
      keyName: app-key
  agent:
    config:
      tolerations:
       - operator: Exists

Apply this new configuration:

$ kubectl apply -f datadog-agent.yaml
datadogagent.datadoghq.com/datadog updated

Validate the DaemonSet update by looking at the new desired Pod value:

$ kubectl get daemonset
NAME            DESIRED   CURRENT   READY   UP-TO-DATE   AVAILABLE   NODE SELECTOR   AGE
datadog-agent   3         3         3       3            3           <none>          7m31s

$ kubectl get pod
NAME                                         READY   STATUS     RESTARTS   AGE
agent-datadog-operator-d897fc9b-7wbsf        1/1     Running    0          15h
datadog-agent-5ctrq                          1/1     Running    0          7m43s
datadog-agent-lkfqt                          0/1     Running    0          15s
datadog-agent-zvdbw                          1/1     Running    0          8m1s

Install the kubectl plugin

See the kubectl plugin documentation.

Use a custom Datadog Operator image

See instructions to build a Datadog Operator custom container image based on an official release in Custom Operator container images.

Datadog Operator images with Helm charts

To install a custom Datadog Operator image using the Helm chart, run the following:

helm install my-datadog-operator --set image.repository=<custom-image-repository> --set image.tag=<custom-image-tag> datadog/datadog-operator

Cleanup

The following command deletes all the Kubernetes resources created by the Datadog Operator and the linked DatadogAgent datadog.

kubectl delete datadogagent datadog

This command outputs datadogagent.datadoghq.com/datadog deleted.

You can then remove the Datadog Operator with the helm delete command:

helm delete my-datadog-operator