Overview
Watchdog is an algorithmic feature for APM performance, infrastructure metrics, and logs that automatically detects potential application and infrastructure issues. It leverages the same seasonal algorithms that power anomalies and dashboards. Watchdog observes trends and patterns in:
Watchdog looks for irregularities in metrics, like a sudden spike in the hit rate. For each irregularity, the Watchdog page displays a Watchdog alert. Each alert includes a graph of the detected metric irregularity and gives more information about the relevant time frame and endpoint or endpoints. Watchdog automatically monitors data sent by the Datadog Agent or by integrations.
For any new source of metrics, logs, or other data, Watchdog requires two weeks of data to establish a baseline of expected behavior. Anomalies detected by Watchdog based on less than two weeks of data may contain inaccuracies.
Watchdog in the services list
When Watchdog detects an irregularity in an APM metric, the pink Watchdog binoculars icon appears next to the impacted service in the APM services list. The number next to the binoculars indicates the number of issues Watchdog has detected within that service.
You can see greater detail about a metric anomaly by navigating to the Services page. On the top of the page is the Watchdog Insights box. Watchdog Insights helps you discover tag values that are associated with anomalous behaviors, such as higher error rate or latency.
You can also find the Watchdog icon on metric graphs.
Click on the binoculars icon to see a Watchdog alert card with more details.
Troubleshooting
Need help? Contact Datadog support.
Further Reading
Additional helpful documentation, links, and articles:
