Live Processes

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Introduction

Datadog’s Process Monitoring allows for real-time visibility of the most granular elements in a deployment.

Installation

The following installation processes are for Agent 6 and 7. If you are using Agent 5, follow this specific installation process.

Dropdown

Once the Datadog Agent is installed, enable Live Processes collection by editing the Agent main configuration file by setting the following parameter to true:

process_config:
  enabled: "true"

The enabled value is a string with the following options:

"true": Enable the Process Agent to collect processes and containers.
"false" (default): Only collect containers if available.
"disabled": Don’t run the Process Agent at all.

Additionally, some configuration options may be set as environment variables.

Note: Options set as environment variables override the settings defined in the configuration file.

After configuration is complete, restart the Agent.

Follow the instructions for the Docker Agent, passing in the following attributes, in addition to any other custom settings as appropriate:

-v /etc/passwd:/etc/passwd:ro
-e DD_PROCESS_AGENT_ENABLED=true

Note:

To collect container information in the standard install, the dd-agent user must have permissions to access docker.sock.
Running the Agent as a container still allows you to collect host processes.

In the dd-agent.yaml manifest used to create the Daemonset, add the following environmental variables, volume mount, and volume:

 env:
    - name: DD_PROCESS_AGENT_ENABLED
      value: "true"
  volumeMounts:
    - name: passwd
      mountPath: /etc/passwd
      readOnly: true
  volumes:
    - hostPath:
        path: /etc/passwd
      name: passwd

Refer to the standard Daemonset installation and the Docker Agent information pages for further documentation.

Note: Running the Agent as a container still allows you to collect host processes.

Update your datadog-values.yaml file with the following process collection configuration, then upgrade your Datadog Helm chart:

datadog:
  # (...)
  processAgent:
   enabled: true

Process Arguments Scrubbing

In order to hide sensitive data on the Live Processes page, the Agent scrubs sensitive arguments from the process command line. This feature is enabled by default and any process argument that matches one of the following words has its value hidden.

"password", "passwd", "mysql_pwd", "access_token", "auth_token", "api_key", "apikey", "secret", "credentials", "stripetoken"

Note: The matching is case insensitive.

Define your own list to be merged with the default one, using the custom_sensitive_words field in datadog.yaml file under the process_config section. Use wildcards (*) to define your own matching scope. However, a single wildcard ('*') is not supported as a sensitive word.

process_config:
  scrub_args: true
  custom_sensitive_words: ['personal_key', '*token', 'sql*', '*pass*d*']

Note: Words in custom_sensitive_words must contain only alphanumeric characters, underscores, or wildcards ('*'). A wildcard-only sensitive word is not supported.

The next image shows one process on the Live Processes page whose arguments have been hidden by using the configuration above.

Set scrub_args to false to completely disable the process arguments scrubbing.

You can also scrub all arguments from processes by enabling the strip_proc_arguments flag in your datadog.yaml configuration file:

process_config:
  strip_proc_arguments: true

Searching, Filtering, and Pivoting

Search Syntax

Processes and containers are, by their nature, extremely high cardinality objects. Fuzzy string search helps you view relevant information. Below is Datadog’s demo environment, filtered with the string postgres /9..

Note: /9. has matched in the command path, and postgres matches the command itself.

To combine multiple string searches into a complex query, use any of the following Boolean operators:


Operator	Description	Example
`AND`	Intersection: both terms are in the selected events (if nothing is added, AND is taken by default)	java AND elasticsearch
`OR`	Union: either term is contained in the selected events	java OR python
`NOT` / `!`	Exclusion: the following term is NOT in the event. You may use the word `NOT` or `!` character to perform the same operation	java NOT elasticsearch equivalent: java !elasticsearch

Use parentheses to group operators together. For example, (NOT (elasticsearch OR kafka) java) OR python .

Tagging

Tagging enhances navigation. In addition to all existing host-level tags, processes are tagged by user.

Furthermore, processes in ECS containers are also tagged by:

task_name
task_version
ecs_cluster

Processeses in Kubernetes containers are tagged by:

pod_name
kube_pod_ip
kube_service
kube_namespace
kube_replica_set
kube_daemon_set
kube_job
kube_deployment
Kube_cluster

Filtering and Pivoting

First, you can filter down to role:McNulty-Query, Datadog’s front-end query service, in order to narrow the search. Then you can search for the NGINX master processes and pivot the table by availability zone to be confident about that service staying highly available.

Here, you are checking the Elasticsearch processes for an individual feature team. You have also added metrics for voluntary and involuntary context switches, available in the gear menu on the upper-right of the table.

Below, you have searched for SSH processes and pivoted by user to understand who is logged into which hosts.

Perhaps this one is less exciting after redaction.

Scatter Plot

Use the scatter plot analytic to compare two metrics with one another in order to better understand the performance of your containers.

To access the scatter plot analytic in the Processes page click on the Show Summary graph button the select the “Scatter Plot” tab:

By default, the graph groups by the command tag key. The size of each dot represents the number of processes in that group, and clicking on a dot displays the individual pids and containers that contribute to the group.

The query at the top of the scatter plot analytic allows you to control your scatter plot analytic:

Selection of metrics to display.
Selection of the aggregation method for both metrics.
Selection of the scale of both X and Y axis (Linear/Log).

Enriched Live Containers view

Live Processes adds extra visibility to your container deployments. The Live Containers feature gives you a similarly comprehensive view of your container and orchestrator environment. When Live Processes is enabled, the process tree for each container is included in the container inspection panel on that page.

Real-time monitoring

While actively working with the Live Processes, metrics are collected at 2s resolution. This is important for highly volatile metrics such as CPU. In the background, for historical context, metrics are collected at 10s resolution.

Notes and frequently asked questions

Collection of open files and current working directory is limited based on the level of privilege of the user running dd-process-agent. In the event that dd-process-agent is able to access these fields, they are collected automatically.
Real-time (2s) data collection is turned off after 30 minutes. To resume real-time collection, refresh the page.
In container deployments, the /etc/passwd file mounted into the docker-dd-agent is necessary to collect usernames for each process. This is a public file and the Process Agent does not use any fields except the username. All features except the user metadata field function without access to this file. Note: Live Processes only uses the host passwd file and does not perform username resolution for users created within containers.