Use the Datadog Agent for Log Collection Only

To setup log collection without infrastructure metrics, you have to disable certain payloads. This results in the potential loss of metadata and tags on the logs you are collecting. Datadog does not recommend this. For more information about the impact of this configuration, contact Datadog Support.

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"