To enable network performance monitoring with the Datadog Agent, use the following configurations:

1. If you are using an agent older than v6.14+, enable live process collection first, otherwise skip this step.

2. Copy the system-probe example configuration:

   sudo -u dd-agent install -m 0640 /etc/datadog-agent/system-probe.yaml.example /etc/datadog-agent/system-probe.yaml
   

3. Edit /etc/datadog-agent/system-probe.yaml to set the enable flag to true:

   network_config:   # use system_probe_config for Agent's older than 7.24.1
     ## @param enabled - boolean - optional - default: false
     ## Set to true to enable Network Performance Monitoring.
     #
     enabled: true
   

4. If you are running an Agent older than v6.18 or 7.18, manually start the system-probe and enable it to start on boot (since v6.18 and v7.18 the system-probe starts automatically when the Agent is started):

   sudo systemctl start datadog-agent-sysprobe
   sudo systemctl enable datadog-agent-sysprobe
   

   Note: If the systemctl command is not available on your system, start it with following command instead: sudo service datadog-agent-sysprobe start and then set it up to start on boot before datadog-agent starts.

5. Restart the Agent.

   sudo systemctl restart datadog-agent
   

   Note: If the systemctl command is not available on your system, run the following command instead: sudo service datadog-agent restart

SELinux-enabled systems

On systems with SELinux enabled, the system-probe binary needs special permissions to use eBPF features.

The Datadog Agent RPM package for CentOS-based systems bundles an SELinux policy to grant these permissions to the system-probe binary.

If you need to use Network Performance Monitoring on other systems with SELinux enabled, do the following:

1. Modify the base SELinux policy to match your SELinux configuration. Depending on your system, some types or attributes may not exist (or have different names).

2. Compile the policy into a module; assuming your policy file is named system_probe_policy.te:

   checkmodule -M -m -o system_probe_policy.mod system_probe_policy.te
   semodule_package -o system_probe_policy.pp -m system_probe_policy.mod
   

3. Apply the module to your SELinux system:

   semodule -v -i system_probe_policy.pp
   

4. Change the system-probe binary type to use the one defined in the policy; assuming your Agent installation directory is /opt/datadog-agent:

   semanage fcontext -a -t system_probe_t /opt/datadog-agent/embedded/bin/system-probe
   restorecon -v /opt/datadog-agent/embedded/bin/system-probe
   

5. Restart the Agent.

Note: these instructions require to have some SELinux utilities installed on the system (checkmodule, semodule, semodule_package, semanage and restorecon) that are available on most standard distributions (Ubuntu, Debian, RHEL, CentOS, SUSE). Check your distribution for details on how to install them.

If these utilities do not exist in your distribution, follow the same procedure but using the utilities provided by your distribution instead.

Data collection for Windows relies on a filter driver for collecting network data.

To enable Network Performance Monitoring for Windows hosts:

1. Install the Datadog Agent (version 7.27.1 or above) with the network driver component enabled.

   [DEPRECATED] (version 7.44 or below) During installation pass ADDLOCAL="MainApplication,NPM" to the msiexec command, or select “Network Performance Monitoring” when running the Agent installation through the GUI.

2. Edit C:\ProgramData\Datadog\system-probe.yaml to set the enabled flag to true:

   network_config:
       enabled: true
   

3. Restart the Agent.

   For PowerShell (powershell.exe):

   restart-service -f datadogagent
   

   For Command Prompt (cmd.exe):

   net /y stop datadogagent && net start datadogagent
   

Note: Network Performance Monitoring monitors Windows hosts only, and not Windows containers.

To enable Network Performance Monitoring with Kubernetes using Helm, add:

datadog:
  networkMonitoring:
    enabled: true

to your values.yaml. Helm chart v2.4.39+ is required. For more information, see the Datadog Helm Chart documentation.

If you are not using Helm, you can enable Network Performance Monitoring with Kubernetes from scratch:

1. Download the datadog-agent.yaml manifest template.

2. Replace <DATADOG_API_KEY> with your Datadog API key.

3. Optional - Set your Datadog site. If you are using the Datadog EU site, set the DD_SITE environment variable to datadoghq.eu in the datadog-agent.yaml manifest.

4. Deploy the DaemonSet with the command:

   kubectl apply -f datadog-agent.yaml
   

If you already have the Agent running with a manifest:

1. Add the annotation container.apparmor.security.beta.kubernetes.io/system-probe: unconfined on the datadog-agent template:

   spec:
       selector:
           matchLabels:
               app: datadog-agent
       template:
           metadata:
               labels:
                   app: datadog-agent
               name: datadog-agent
               annotations:
                   container.apparmor.security.beta.kubernetes.io/system-probe: unconfined
   

2. Enable process collection and the system probe with the following environment variables in the Agent DaemonSet. If you are running a container per Agent process, add the following environment variables to the Process Agent container; otherwise, add them to the Agent container.

     # (...)
                     env:
                     # (...)
                         - name: DD_PROCESS_AGENT_ENABLED
                           value: 'true'
                         - name: DD_SYSTEM_PROBE_ENABLED
                           value: 'true'
                         - name: DD_SYSTEM_PROBE_EXTERNAL
                           value: 'true'
                         - name: DD_SYSPROBE_SOCKET
                           value: /var/run/sysprobe/sysprobe.sock
   

3. Mount the following extra volumes into the datadog-agent container:

    # (...)
           spec:
               serviceAccountName: datadog-agent
               containers:
                   - name: datadog-agent
                     image: 'gcr.io/datadoghq/agent:latest'
                     # (...)
                 volumeMounts:
                     - name: procdir
                       mountPath: /host/proc
                       readOnly: true
                     - name: cgroups
                       mountPath: /host/sys/fs/cgroup
                       readOnly: true
                     - name: debugfs
                       mountPath: /sys/kernel/debug
                     - name: sysprobe-socket-dir
                       mountPath: /var/run/sysprobe
   

4. Add a new system-probe as a side car to the Agent:

    # (...)
           spec:
               serviceAccountName: datadog-agent
               containers:
                   - name: datadog-agent
                     image: 'gcr.io/datadoghq/agent:latest'
                   # (...)
                   - name: system-probe
                     image: 'gcr.io/datadoghq/agent:latest'
                     imagePullPolicy: Always
                     securityContext:
                         capabilities:
                             add:
                                 - SYS_ADMIN
                                 - SYS_RESOURCE
                                 - SYS_PTRACE
                                 - NET_ADMIN
                                 - NET_BROADCAST
                                 - NET_RAW
                                 - IPC_LOCK
                                 - CHOWN
                     command:
                         - /opt/datadog-agent/embedded/bin/system-probe
                     env:
                         - name: DD_SYSPROBE_SOCKET
                           value: /var/run/sysprobe/sysprobe.sock
                     resources:
                         requests:
                             memory: 150Mi
                             cpu: 200m
                         limits:
                             memory: 150Mi
                             cpu: 200m
                     volumeMounts:
                         - name: procdir
                           mountPath: /host/proc
                           readOnly: true
                         - name: cgroups
                           mountPath: /host/sys/fs/cgroup
                           readOnly: true
                         - name: debugfs
                           mountPath: /sys/kernel/debug
                         - name: sysprobe-socket-dir
                           mountPath: /var/run/sysprobe
   

5. Finally, add the following volumes to your manifest:

               volumes:
                   - name: sysprobe-socket-dir
                     emptyDir: {}
                   - name: debugfs
                     hostPath:
                         path: /sys/kernel/debug
   

The Datadog Operator is a way to deploy the Datadog Agent on Kubernetes and OpenShift. It reports deployment status, health, and errors in its Custom Resource status, and it limits the risk of misconfiguration thanks to higher-level configuration options.

To enable Network Performance Monitoring in Operator, use the following configuration:

kind: DatadogAgent
apiVersion: datadoghq.com/v2alpha1
metadata:
  name: placeholder
  namespace: placeholder
spec:
  features:
    npm:
      enabled: true

To enable Network Performance Monitoring in Docker, use the following configuration when starting the container Agent:

docker run --cgroupns host \
--pid host \
-e DD_API_KEY="<DATADOG_API_KEY>" \
-e DD_SYSTEM_PROBE_NETWORK_ENABLED=true \
-e DD_PROCESS_AGENT_ENABLED=true \
-v /var/run/docker.sock:/var/run/docker.sock:ro \
-v /proc/:/host/proc/:ro \
-v /sys/fs/cgroup/:/host/sys/fs/cgroup:ro \
-v /sys/kernel/debug:/sys/kernel/debug \
--security-opt apparmor:unconfined \
--cap-add=SYS_ADMIN \
--cap-add=SYS_RESOURCE \
--cap-add=SYS_PTRACE \
--cap-add=NET_ADMIN \
--cap-add=NET_BROADCAST \
--cap-add=NET_RAW \
--cap-add=IPC_LOCK \
--cap-add=CHOWN \
gcr.io/datadoghq/agent:latest

Replace <DATADOG_API_KEY> with your Datadog API key.

If using docker-compose, make the following additions to the Datadog Agent service.

version: '3'
services:
  datadog:
    image: "gcr.io/datadoghq/agent:latest"
    environment:
      - DD_SYSTEM_PROBE_NETWORK_ENABLED=true
      - DD_PROCESS_AGENT_ENABLED=true
      - DD_API_KEY=<DATADOG_API_KEY>
    volumes:
      - /var/run/docker.sock:/var/run/docker.sock:ro
      - /proc/:/host/proc/:ro
      - /sys/fs/cgroup/:/host/sys/fs/cgroup:ro
      - /sys/kernel/debug:/sys/kernel/debug
    cap_add:
      - SYS_ADMIN
      - SYS_RESOURCE
      - SYS_PTRACE
      - NET_ADMIN
      - NET_BROADCAST
      - NET_RAW
      - IPC_LOCK
      - CHOWN
    security_opt:
      - apparmor:unconfined

To set up on Amazon ECS, see the Amazon ECS documentation page.