Datadog Server Monitoring Setup for Website

Setting Up Server Monitoring with Datadog

Datadog is a SaaS monitoring platform with an agent on servers. It collects infrastructure metrics, APM (request tracing), logs, and synthetic tests in one interface.

Installing the Agent

# Ubuntu/Debian
DD_API_KEY="your-api-key" DD_SITE="datadoghq.eu" \
  bash -c "$(curl -L https://s3.amazonaws.com/dd-agent/scripts/install_script_agent7.sh)"

# Docker
docker run -d --name datadog-agent \
  -e DD_API_KEY="your-api-key" \
  -e DD_SITE="datadoghq.eu" \
  -e DD_LOGS_ENABLED=true \
  -e DD_LOGS_CONFIG_CONTAINER_COLLECT_ALL=true \
  -e DD_APM_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 \
  gcr.io/datadoghq/agent:7

Agent Configuration

# /etc/datadog-agent/datadog.yaml
api_key: your-api-key
site: datadoghq.eu
hostname: web01.example.com

tags:
  - env:production
  - app:myapp
  - region:eu-west-1

logs_enabled: true
apm_config:
  enabled: true

process_config:
  enabled: true

# Integrations
integrations:
  nginx:
    - nginx_status_url: http://localhost/nginx_status
  php_fpm:
    - status_url: http://localhost/status
      ping_url: http://localhost/ping
  postgres:
    - host: localhost
      username: datadog
      password: ENC[k8s_secret,v1.0/namespace/secret/pass]
      dbname: myapp

PostgreSQL: Monitoring User

CREATE USER datadog WITH PASSWORD 'secure-password';
GRANT pg_monitor TO datadog;
GRANT SELECT ON pg_stat_database TO datadog;

Laravel: Datadog APM

// composer.json
// "datadog/dd-trace": "^0.90"

// Custom operation tracing
use DDTrace\GlobalTracer;

class OrderService
{
    public function processOrder(Order $order): void
    {
        $tracer = GlobalTracer::get();
        $span   = $tracer->startActiveSpan('order.process');

        try {
            $span->setTag('order.id', $order->id);
            $span->setTag('order.total', $order->total);

            $this->validateInventory($order);
            $this->chargePayment($order);
            $this->sendConfirmation($order);

        } catch (\Throwable $e) {
            $span->setError($e);
            throw $e;
        } finally {
            $span->finish();
        }
    }
}

Alerts via Datadog Monitor

resource "datadog_monitor" "cpu_high" {
  name    = "High CPU on web servers"
  type    = "metric alert"
  query   = "avg(last_5m):avg:system.cpu.user{env:production} by {host} > 85"

  message = <<-EOT
    CPU usage exceeded 85% on {{host.name}}.
    @slack-monitoring
  EOT

  thresholds = {
    critical = 85
    warning  = 75
  }

  notify_no_data    = true
  renotify_interval = 60
  tags              = ["env:production", "app:myapp"]
}

resource "datadog_monitor" "error_rate" {
  name  = "High error rate"
  type  = "metric alert"
  query = "sum(last_5m):sum:trace.web.request.errors{env:production}.as_count() / sum:trace.web.request.hits{env:production}.as_count() * 100 > 5"

  message = "Error rate > 5% @pagerduty-oncall"
  thresholds = { critical = 5, warning = 2 }
}

Implementation Timeline

Installing Datadog Agent with basic integrations (Nginx, PHP-FPM, PostgreSQL): 1–2 days. With APM tracing for Laravel/Node.js and monitor configuration: 2–3 days.