Graphing

If you stop reporting data to Datadog, after a certain period of time metrics, tags, and hosts no longer appear in the Datadog UI:

Even though the data is not listed, you can still query the data with the JSON editor. A simple solution is to query for the host name or tags.

If you’re planning to frequently churn hosts, add a tag to the Agent in datadog.yaml or use the Infrastructure list (user tags).

Additionally, you can still manually apply tags or attributes by entering them in the value input field within template variable dropdown panels.

Template variables

Template variable dropdown panels have values that are populated from different sources based on the sources used by the dashboard. The age-out period for template variable values that are queried depends on the data source:

Deleting

Metrics and tags

There is no way to delete a metric or tag immediately. The list above shows how long a metric or tag stays in the UI if it is no longer reporting.

For monitors, the metric stream is no longer considered after the age-out period.

For dashboards, the metric or tag appears in the visualization following the age-out period but is not available in the dropdown panels for graphing with the UI editor. The corresponding metric or tag remains available for graphing by using the JSON method.

Hosts

If you’re running the Agent, and you’ve intentionally stopped or removed your host, all hosts that have not seen new data in 2 hours disappear from the UI. You can still query against them. However, they do not appear in dropdowns, the infrastructure list, or host map.