Datadog Operator

Overview

The Datadog Operator aims to provide a new way of deploying the Datadog Agent on Kubernetes. Once deployed, the Datadog Operator provides:

• Agent configuration validation that limits configuration mistakes.
• Orchestration of creating/updating Datadog Agent resources.
• Reporting of Agent configuration status in its Kubernetes CRD resource.
• Optionally, use of an advanced DaemonSet deployment by leveraging the ExtendedDaemonSet.
• Many other features to come :).

The Datadog Operator is RedHat certified and available on operatorhub.io.

Datadog Operator vs. Helm chart

The official Datadog Helm chart is still the recommended way to setup Datadog in a Kubernetes cluster, as it has most supported configuration options readily accessible. It also makes using more advanced features easier than rolling your own deployments.

The Datadog Operator aims to improve the user experience around deploying Datadog. It does this by reporting deployment status, health, and errors in its Custom Resource status, and by limiting the risk of misconfiguration thanks to higher-level configuration options.

However, the Datadog Operator is still in beta, so it is not yet a recommended way of installing the Agent in production. Datadog's end goal is to support both the Helm chart and the operator (as well as providing basic deployment files in the Agent repository when CRDs and Helm are not an option) as official ways of installing Datadog.

Getting started

See the Getting Started dedicated documentation to learn how to deploy the Datadog operator and your first Agent, and Configuration to see examples, a list of all configuration keys, and default values.

Migrating from 0.8.x to 1.0.0

Operator 1.0.0 contains several changes users need to be aware of:

• DatadogAgent CRD has two versions, v1alpha1 and v2alpha1. They are used as a stored version by Operator 0.8.x and 1.0.0 respectively. See this Kubernetes documentation page for more details about CRD versioning.
• v1alpha1 and v2alpha1 are not backward or forward compatible. The Datadog Operator 1.0.0 implements a Conversion Webhook to migrate, though it only supports migrating from v1alpha1 to v2alpha1.
• With the Conversion Webhook enabled, users can run 1.0.0 but continue applying a v1alpha1 manifest. However, they won't be able to retrieve the DatadogAgent manifest as a v1alpha1 object (see the previous item).
• The Conversion Webhook requires a cert manager. See the migration guide in the public or helm chart documentation for more details.
• 0.8.x managed PodDisruptionBudget for Cluster Agent and Cluster Checks Worker deployments. 1.0.0 doesn't, however this is on our roadmap.

Default Enabled Features

• Cluster Agent
• Admission Controller
• Cluster Checks
• Kubernetes Event Collection
• Kubernetes State Core Check
• Live Container Collection
• Orchestrator Explorer
• UnixDomainSocket transport for DogStatsD (and APM if enabled)

Functionalities

The Datadog operator also allows you to:

• Configure and provide custom checks to the Agents.
• Deploy the Datadog Cluster Agent with your node Agents.
• Secrets Management with the Datadog Operator.

How to contribute

See the How to Contribute page.

Release

Release process documentation is available here.