---
title: Agent Architecture
description: >-
  Overview of Datadog Agent architecture including main processes, components
  like the Collector and Forwarder, and port configurations.
breadcrumbs: Docs > Agent > Agent Architecture
---

> For the complete documentation index, see [llms.txt](https://docs.datadoghq.com/llms.txt).

# Agent Architecture

## Agent architecture{% #agent-architecture %}

Agent 6 and 7 are composed of a main process responsible for collecting infrastructure metrics and logs, and receiving [DogStatsD metrics](https://docs.datadoghq.com/metrics/custom_metrics/dogstatsd_metrics_submission.md#metrics). The main components to this process are:

- The Collector, which runs checks and collects metrics.
- The Forwarder, which sends payloads to Datadog.

The following optional processes are spawned by the Agent if enabled in the `datadog.yaml` configuration file:

- The APM Agent is a process that collects [traces](https://docs.datadoghq.com/tracing/guide/terminology.md). It is enabled by default.
- The Process Agent is a process that collects live process information. By default, the Process Agent only collects available containers, otherwise it is disabled.
- The [Agent Data Plane](https://docs.datadoghq.com/agent/configuration/agent-data-plane.md) (Preview) is a process that receives, aggregates, and forwards [DogStatsD metrics](https://docs.datadoghq.com/metrics/custom_metrics/dogstatsd_metrics_submission.md#metrics) in place of the main process. It is disabled by default.

On Windows the services are listed as:

| Service               | Description           |
| --------------------- | --------------------- |
| DatadogAgent          | Datadog Agent         |
| datadog-trace-agent   | Datadog Trace Agent   |
| datadog-process-agent | Datadog Process Agent |

By default the Agent binds three [ports](https://docs.datadoghq.com/agent/configuration/network.md#open-ports) on Linux and four ports on Windows and macOS:

| Port | Description                                                                                 |
| ---- | ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
| 5000 | Exposes runtime metrics about the Agent.                                                    |
| 5001 | Used by the Agent CLI and GUI to send commands and pull information from the running Agent. |
| 5002 | Serves the GUI server on Windows and macOS.                                                 |
| 8125 | Used for the DogStatsD server to receive external metrics.                                  |

When the Agent Data Plane is enabled, it binds port 8125 in place of the main process, and binds the following additional ports:

| Port | Description                                                                                           |
| ---- | ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
| 5100 | Exposes runtime metrics about the Agent Data Plane.                                                   |
| 5101 | Used by the Agent Data Plane CLI and the main Agent process to send commands to the Agent Data Plane. |

For information on configuring the ports, see [Network Traffic](https://docs.datadoghq.com/agent/configuration/network.md#configure-ports).

### Collector{% #collector %}

The collector gathers all standard metrics every 15 seconds. Agent 6 embeds a Python 2.7 interpreter to run integrations and [custom checks](https://docs.datadoghq.com/extend/custom_checks/write_agent_check.md).

### Forwarder{% #forwarder %}

The Agent forwarder sends metrics over HTTPS to Datadog. Buffering prevents network splits from affecting metrics reporting. Metrics are buffered in memory until a limit in size or number of outstanding send requests is reached. Afterward, the oldest metrics are discarded to keep the forwarder's memory footprint manageable. Logs are sent to Datadog over an SSL-encrypted TCP connection.

### DogStatsD{% #dogstatsd %}

In Agent 6, DogStatsD is a Golang implementation of [Etsy's StatsD](https://github.com/etsy/statsd) metric aggregation daemon. DogStatsD receives and rolls up arbitrary metrics over UDP or a UNIX socket, allowing custom code to be instrumented without adding latency. Learn more about [DogStatsD](https://docs.datadoghq.com/metrics/custom_metrics/dogstatsd_metrics_submission.md).

When the [Agent Data Plane](https://docs.datadoghq.com/agent/configuration/agent-data-plane.md) is enabled, it runs the DogStatsD server in place of the main Agent process. Metrics from checks continue to be processed by the main Agent process.

## Further reading{% #further-reading %}

Additional helpful documentation, links, and articles:

- [Supported Platforms](https://docs.datadoghq.com/agent/supported_platforms.md)
- [Agent Configuration](https://docs.datadoghq.com/agent/configuration.md)