Use the Datadog Agent for Log Collection Only

To disable payloads, you must be running Agent v6.4+. This disables metric data submission so that hosts stop showing up in Datadog. Follow these steps:

  1. Open the datadog.yaml configuration file.

  2. Add the enable_payloads attribute with the following settings:

    enable_payloads:
        series: false
        events: false
        service_checks: false
        sketches: false
    
  3. Configure the Agent to collect Logs.

  4. Restart the Agent.

If you are using the Docker containerized Agent, set the DD_ENABLE_PAYLOADS_EVENTS, DD_ENABLE_PAYLOADS_SERIES, DD_ENABLE_PAYLOADS_SERVICE_CHECKS, and DD_ENABLE_PAYLOADS_SKETCHES environment variables to false in addition to your Agent configuration:

docker run -d --name datadog-agent \
           --cgroupns host \
           --pid host \
           -e DD_API_KEY=<DATADOG_API_KEY> \
           -e DD_LOGS_ENABLED=true \
           -e DD_LOGS_CONFIG_CONTAINER_COLLECT_ALL=true \
           -e DD_CONTAINER_EXCLUDE="name:datadog-agent" \
           -e DD_ENABLE_PAYLOADS_EVENTS=false \
           -e DD_ENABLE_PAYLOADS_SERIES=false \
           -e DD_ENABLE_PAYLOADS_SERVICE_CHECKS=false \
           -e DD_ENABLE_PAYLOADS_SKETCHES=false \
           -v /var/run/docker.sock:/var/run/docker.sock:ro \
           -v /proc/:/host/proc/:ro \
           -v /opt/datadog-agent/run:/opt/datadog-agent/run:rw \
           -v /sys/fs/cgroup/:/host/sys/fs/cgroup:ro \
           gcr.io/datadoghq/agent:latest

If you are deploying the Agent in Kubernetes, set the DD_ENABLE_PAYLOADS_EVENTS, DD_ENABLE_PAYLOADS_SERIES, DD_ENABLE_PAYLOADS_SERVICE_CHECKS, and DD_ENABLE_PAYLOADS_SKETCHES environment variables to false in addition to your Agent configuration.

 ## Send logs only
 datadog:
 [...]
   env:
      - name: DD_ENABLE_PAYLOADS_EVENTS
        value: "false"
      - name: DD_ENABLE_PAYLOADS_SERIES
        value: "false"
      - name: DD_ENABLE_PAYLOADS_SERVICE_CHECKS
        value: "false"
      - name: DD_ENABLE_PAYLOADS_SKETCHES
        value: "false"