Overview
Unified service tagging ties Datadog telemetry together by using three reserved tags: env, service, and version.
With these three tags, you can:
- Identify deployment impact with trace and container metrics filtered by version
- Navigate seamlessly across traces, metrics, and logs with consistent tags
- View service data based on environment or version in a unified fashion
Note: The official service of a log defaults to the container short-image if no Autodiscovery logs configuration is present. To override the official service of a log, add Autodiscovery Docker labels/pod annotations. For example: "com.datadoghq.ad.logs"='[{"service": "service-name"}]'
Requirements
Unified service tagging requires the setup of a Datadog Agent that is 6.19.x/7.19.x or higher.
Unified service tagging requires a tracer version that supports new configurations of the reserved tags. More information can be found per language in the setup instructions.
| Language | Minimum Tracer Version |
|---|
| .NET | 1.17.0+ |
| C++ | 1.1.4+ |
| Go | 1.24.0+ |
| Java | 0.50.0+ |
| Node | 0.20.3+ |
| PHP | 0.47.0+ |
| Python | 0.38.0+ |
| Ruby | 0.34.0+ |
- Unified service tagging requires knowledge of configuring tags. If you are unsure of how to configure tags, read the Getting Started with Tagging and Assigning Tags documentation before proceeding to configuration.
Configuration
To start configuring unified service tagging, choose your environment:
Containerized environment
In containerized environments, env, service, and version are set through the service’s environment variables or labels (for example, Kubernetes deployment and pod labels, Docker container labels). The Datadog Agent detects this tagging configuration and applies it to the data it collects from containers.
To setup unified service tagging in a containerized environment:
Enable Autodiscovery. This allows the Datadog Agent to automatically identify services running on a specific container and gathers data from those services to map environment variables to the env, service, and version tags.
If you are using Docker, make sure the Agent can access your container’s Docker socket. This allows the Agent detect the environment variables and map them to the standard tags.
Configure your environment that corresponds to your container orchestration service based on either full configuration or partial configuration as detailed below.
Configuration
If you deployed the Datadog Cluster Agent with Admission Controller enabled, the Admission Controller mutates the pod manifests and injects all required environment variables (based on configured mutation conditions). In that case, manual configuration of DD_ environment variables in pod manifests is unnecessary. For more information, see the Admission Controller documentation.
Full configuration
To get the full range of unified service tagging when using Kubernetes, add environment variables to both the deployment object level and the pod template spec level:
apiVersion: apps/v1
kind: Deployment
metadata:
labels:
tags.datadoghq.com/env: "<ENV>"
tags.datadoghq.com/service: "<SERVICE>"
tags.datadoghq.com/version: "<VERSION>"
...
template:
metadata:
labels:
tags.datadoghq.com/env: "<ENV>"
tags.datadoghq.com/service: "<SERVICE>"
tags.datadoghq.com/version: "<VERSION>"
containers:
- ...
env:
- name: DD_ENV
valueFrom:
fieldRef:
fieldPath: metadata.labels['tags.datadoghq.com/env']
- name: DD_SERVICE
valueFrom:
fieldRef:
fieldPath: metadata.labels['tags.datadoghq.com/service']
- name: DD_VERSION
valueFrom:
fieldRef:
fieldPath: metadata.labels['tags.datadoghq.com/version']
Partial configuration
Pod-level metrics
To configure pod-level metrics, add the following standard labels (tags.datadoghq.com) to the pod spec of a Deployment, StatefulSet, or Job:
template:
metadata:
labels:
tags.datadoghq.com/env: "<ENV>"
tags.datadoghq.com/service: "<SERVICE>"
tags.datadoghq.com/version: "<VERSION>"
These labels cover pod-level Kubernetes CPU, memory, network, and disk metrics, and can be used for injecting DD_ENV, DD_SERVICE, and DD_VERSION into your service’s container through Kubernetes’s downward API.
If you have multiple containers per pod, you can specify standard labels by container:
tags.datadoghq.com/<container-name>.env
tags.datadoghq.com/<container-name>.service
tags.datadoghq.com/<container-name>.version
State metrics
To configure Kubernetes State Metrics:
Set join_standard_tags to true in your configuration file. See this example configuration file for the setting location.
Add the same standard labels to the collection of labels for the parent resource, for example: Deployment.
apiVersion: apps/v1
kind: Deployment
metadata:
labels:
tags.datadoghq.com/env: "<ENV>"
tags.datadoghq.com/service: "<SERVICE>"
tags.datadoghq.com/version: "<VERSION>"
spec:
template:
metadata:
labels:
tags.datadoghq.com/env: "<ENV>"
tags.datadoghq.com/service: "<SERVICE>"
tags.datadoghq.com/version: "<VERSION>"
APM tracer and StatsD client
To configure APM tracer and StatsD client environment variables, use the Kubernetes’s downward API in the format below:
containers:
- ...
env:
- name: DD_ENV
valueFrom:
fieldRef:
fieldPath: metadata.labels['tags.datadoghq.com/env']
- name: DD_SERVICE
valueFrom:
fieldRef:
fieldPath: metadata.labels['tags.datadoghq.com/service']
- name: DD_VERSION
valueFrom:
fieldRef:
fieldPath: metadata.labels['tags.datadoghq.com/version']
Full configuration
Set the DD_ENV, DD_SERVICE, and DD_VERSION environment variables and corresponding Docker labels for your container to get the full range of unified service tagging.
The values for service and version can be provided in the Dockerfile:
ENV DD_SERVICE <SERVICE>
ENV DD_VERSION <VERSION>
LABEL com.datadoghq.tags.service="<SERVICE>"
LABEL com.datadoghq.tags.version="<VERSION>"
Since env is likely determined at deploy time, you can inject the environment variable and label later:
docker run -e DD_ENV=<ENV> -l com.datadoghq.tags.env=<ENV> ...
You may also prefer to set everything at deploy time:
docker run -e DD_ENV="<ENV>" \
-e DD_SERVICE="<SERVICE>" \
-e DD_VERSION="<VERSION>" \
-l com.datadoghq.tags.env="<ENV>" \
-l com.datadoghq.tags.service="<SERVICE>" \
-l com.datadoghq.tags.version="<VERSION>" \
...
Partial configuration
If your service has no need for the Datadog environment variables (for example, third party software like Redis, PostgreSQL, NGINX, and applications not traced by APM) you can just use the Docker labels:
com.datadoghq.tags.env
com.datadoghq.tags.service
com.datadoghq.tags.version
As explained in the full configuration, these labels can be set in a Dockerfile or as arguments for launching the container.
Full configuration
Set the DD_ENV, DD_SERVICE, and DD_VERSION environment variables and corresponding Docker labels in the runtime environment of each service’s container to get the full range of unified service tagging. For instance, you can set all of this configuration in one place through your ECS task definition:
"environment": [
{
"name": "DD_ENV",
"value": "<ENV>"
},
{
"name": "DD_SERVICE",
"value": "<SERVICE>"
},
{
"name": "DD_VERSION",
"value": "<VERSION>"
}
],
"dockerLabels": {
"com.datadoghq.tags.env": "<ENV>",
"com.datadoghq.tags.service": "<SERVICE>",
"com.datadoghq.tags.version": "<VERSION>"
}
Partial configuration
If your service has no need for the Datadog environment variables (for example, third party software like Redis, PostgreSQL, NGINX, and applications not traced by APM) you can just use the Docker labels in your ECS task definition:
"dockerLabels": {
"com.datadoghq.tags.env": "<ENV>",
"com.datadoghq.tags.service": "<SERVICE>",
"com.datadoghq.tags.version": "<VERSION>"
}
Non-containerized environment
Depending on how you build and deploy your services’ binaries or executables, you may have several options available for setting environment variables. Since you may run one or more services per host, Datadog recommends scoping these environment variables to a single process.
To form a single point of configuration for all telemetry emitted directly from your services’ runtime for traces, logs, RUM resources, Synthetics tests, StatsD metrics, or system metrics, either:
Export the environment variables in the command for your executable:
DD_ENV=<env> DD_SERVICE=<service> DD_VERSION=<version> /bin/my-service
Or use Chef, Ansible, or another orchestration tool to populate a service’s systemd or initd configuration file with the DD environment variables. When the service process starts, it has access to those variables.
When configuring your traces for unified service tagging:
Configure the APM Tracer with DD_ENV to keep the definition of env closer to the application that is generating the traces. This method allows the env tag to be sourced automatically from a tag in the span metadata.
Configure spans with DD_VERSION to add version to all spans that fall under the service that belongs to the tracer (generally DD_SERVICE). This means that if your service creates spans with the name of an external service, those spans do not receive version as a tag.
As long as version is present in spans, it is added to trace metrics generated from those spans. The version can be added manually in-code or automatically by the APM Tracer. When configured, these are used by the APM and DogStatsD clients to tag trace data and StatsD metrics with env, service, and version. If enabled, the APM tracer also injects the values of these variables into your logs.
Note: There can only be one service per span. Trace metrics generally have a single service as well. However, if you have a different service defined in your hosts’ tags, that configured service tag shows up on all trace metrics emitted from that host.
If you’re using connected logs and traces, enable automatic logs injection if supported for your APM Tracer. Then, the APM Tracer automatically injects env, service, and version into your logs, therefore eliminating manual configuration for those fields elsewhere.
Note: The PHP Tracer does not support configuration of unified service tagging for logs.
If you’re using connected RUM and traces, specify the browser application in the service field, define the environment in the env field, and list the versions in the version field of your initialization file.
When you create a RUM application, confirm the env and service names.
Tags are added in an append-only fashion for custom StatsD metrics. For example, if you have two different values for env, the metrics are tagged with both environments. There is no order in which one tag overrides another of the same name.
If your service has access to DD_ENV, DD_SERVICE, and DD_VERSION, then the DogStatsD client automatically adds the corresponding tags to your custom metrics.
Note: The Datadog DogStatsD clients for .NET and PHP do not support this functionality.
You can add env and service tags to your infrastructure metrics. In non-containerized contexts, tagging for service metrics is configured at the Agent level.
Because this configuration does not change for each invocation of a service’s process, adding version is not recommended.
Single service per host
Set the following configuration in the Agent’s main configuration file:
env: <ENV>
tags:
- service:<SERVICE>
This setup guarantees consistent tagging of env and service for all data emitted by the Agent.
Multiple services per host
Set the following configuration in the Agent’s main configuration file:
To get unique service tags on CPU, memory, and disk I/O metrics at the process level, configure a process check in the Agent’s configuration folder (for example, in the conf.d folder under process.d/conf.yaml):
init_config:
instances:
- name: web-app
search_string: ["/bin/web-app"]
exact_match: false
service: web-app
- name: nginx
search_string: ["nginx"]
exact_match: false
service: nginx-web-app
Note: If you already have a service tag set globally in your Agent’s main configuration file, the process metrics are tagged with two services. Since this can cause confusion with interpreting the metrics, it is recommended to configure the service tag only in the configuration of the process check.
Serverless environment
For more information about AWS Lambda functions, see how to connect your Lambda telemetry using tags.
Further Reading
Additional helpful documentation, links, and articles:
