Find below a summary of Datadog data collection, resolution, and retention:
| Product category | Source | Collection Methods | Collection interval | Minimum Resolution | Default Retention |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Alerting | Service Level Objectives | Datadog monitors, Datadog Synthetic monitoring, or metrics (infrastructure, APM trace, custom) | Data source-dependent | Data source-dependent | 7, 30, or 90 days (chosen by user in SLO configuration) |
| APM | Indexed spans (unsampled) | Datadog Agent + tracing library | 10 seconds | 1 millisecond | Plan |
| APM | Profiles | Datadog Agent + tracing library | 60 seconds | 60 seconds | 7 days |
| APM | Profile metrics | Datadog Agent + tracing library | 60 seconds | 60 seconds | 1 month |
| APM | Services/resources statistics and span summaries | Datadog Agent + tracing library | 10 seconds | 10 seconds | 30 days |
| APM | Traces (sampled) | Datadog Agent + tracing library | 10 seconds | 1 millisecond | 15 days. Viewed traces are retained long-term. See Trace Storage for details. |
| APM | Trace metrics (unsampled) | Datadog Agent + tracing library | 10 seconds | 1 second | 15 months |
| Cloud | Alibaba | API crawler | 10 min (default) | 1 min | 15 months |
| Cloud | AWS | API crawler | 10 min (default) | 1 min | 15 months |
| Cloud | Azure | API crawler | 5 min (default) | 1 min | 15 months |
| Cloud | Google Cloud | API crawler | 5 min (default) | 1 min | 15 months |
| Incident Management | Incident Management | Incident data | n/a | n/a | 15 months |
| Infrastructure | Agent integrations | Datadog Agent + enabled integrations | 15 seconds | 1 second | 15 months |
| Infrastructure | Custom metrics (Agent check) | Datadog Agent + custom Agent check | 15 seconds | 1 second | 15 months |
| Infrastructure | Custom metrics (API) | POST directly to Datadog’s API | Real time | 1 second | 15 months |
| Infrastructure | Custom metrics (StatsD) | Datadog Agent (built-in statsD collector) | 15 seconds | 1 second | 15 months |
| Infrastructure | Events | Datadog Agent, integrations, or API | Real time | 1 second | 13 months |
| Infrastructure | Live containers | Datadog Agent + enabled Docker integration or Datadog container Agent | 2 seconds | 1 second | 36 hours |
| Infrastructure | Live processes | Datadog Agent + Process Agent | 2 seconds | 1 second | 36 hours |
| Infrastructure | Network Performance Monitoring | System Probe | 5 minutes (default) | 1 min | 7 days |
| Infrastructure | System metrics | Datadog Agent | 15 seconds | 1 second | 15 months |
| Logs | Logs | Datadog Agent + Logs, 3rd party log collectors, or API | Real time | 1 millisecond | Plan |
| Real User Monitoring | Real User Monitoring | RUM SDK | Real time | 1 millisecond | 30 days for session, view, action and error events 15 days for resource and long task events |
| Security Monitoring | Security Signals | Datadog Security Monitoring | Real time | 1 millisecond | 15 months |
| Synthetic Monitoring | API Test metrics | Datadog Synthetic Monitoing application | User-defined | 1 min | 15 months |
| Synthetic Monitoring | API Test results | Datadog Synthetic Monitoring application | User-defined | 1 min | Result seen in the UI by user: 15 months Result not seen in the UI by user: 2 months |
| Synthetic Monitoring | Browser Test metrics | Datadog Synthetic Monitoring application | User-defined | 5 min | 15 months |
| Synthetic Monitoring | Browser Test results | Datadog Synthetic Monitoring application | User-defined | 5 min | Result seen in the UI by user: 15 months Result not seen in the UI by user: 2 months |