Consolidates all our logs into a single place, making it easier to find errors
What is our primary use case?
We have a tech stack including all backend services written in TS/Node (mostly) and as a full stack engineer, it is crucial to keep track of new and existing errors. Our logs have been consolidated in Datadog and are accessible for search and review, so the service has become a daily tool for my work.
More recently, session replay has been adopted at my company, but I do not like it so much because the UI elements are not in their place, so it is very hard to see what the users on the web app are actually clicking on.
How has it helped my organization?
The best way it has helped us is by consolidating all our logs into a single place and making it easier to find errors. Previously using AWS Cloudwatch was cumbersome and time-consuming. One issue I do have with logs is the length of time they are on the platform. Some issues happen sporadically, so it would be good to have logs for longer than one month by default or make it a configuration.
Another issue that I have is with the search syntax, it could be simpler and it feels like there are too many ways to do the same things.
What is most valuable?
Logs search is the most valuable feature because it has consolidated all of our backend services logs into one place. Now we can see the relationship between them as requests are going from one service to other dependencies.
What needs improvement?
One issue I do have with logs is the length of time they are on the platform. Some issues happen sporadically, so it would be good to have logs for longer than one month by default or make it a configuration. I have yet to try rehydrating logs, so this might be an option I need to try. Another issue I have is with the search syntax, it could be simpler. The syntax is a bit cumbersome and there is not an intuitive to save them to look for similar searches in the future.
Finally, while my company replaced a different tool for session replay with DataDog's version, I find it clunky and in need of further improvements. For example, when troubleshooting a web portal issue, it is super important to know what the user clicked, but the elements are not where they should be in the replay.
It is also hard to find details about the sessions, and metadata such as user email, account, etc. that exist on other services with replay features.
For how long have I used the solution?
I have been using Datadof for approximately five years.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
So far we haven't had any issues with uptime and Datadog has been available when needed.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
It seems to scale well as we continue to add services that need monitoring.
How are customer service and support?
I haven't had to contact support.
Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?
Cloudwatch was not a great tool for what we need to do to troubleshoot issues.
What about the implementation team?
We deployed it in-house with intermediate expertise.
What was our ROI?
I am not sure how much we are paying, but I use the app often enough to feel like we are getting a good ROI.
Which other solutions did I evaluate?
I was not involved in the choosing process as a software engineer
Which deployment model are you using for this solution?
Public Cloud
The most powerful monitoring tool
What do you like best about the product?
The workflow feature is amazing, including important steps where is manageble
What do you dislike about the product?
The workflow feature only accept 100 steps.
What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?
It enables Tecsys Inc to proactive monitoring the whole environment and take actions acordingly.
devops engineer
What do you like best about the product?
very interested in devops monitoring tools
What do you dislike about the product?
high price as the products are added on.
What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?
need to get visibility of infra/apm/devops environment.
Why DDOG
What do you like best about the product?
It's a comprehensive platform and seemlessly created from ground up. I like the tech underneath. It has good customer support, easy to use and easily integrated into other tools.
What do you dislike about the product?
Learning curve is a bit higher for new users.
What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?
Troubleshooting any issues in the applications.
Instant Observability
What do you like best about the product?
Integrating with Datadog enabled our company to move from zero to full application and infrastructure obserability in the matter of a couple months.
What do you dislike about the product?
The number of services enbaled by default can be overwhelming and costly.
What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?
Observing our stack that's hosted accross multiple cloud providers all in one place.
Actionable Observability
What do you like best about the product?
The UI is about the best interface I've seen for a data rich product. Their UI team clearly spends a ton of time getting into the very fine details of how the interface should respond in an intuitive way, as I'm always finding small little bits of joy that make it really easy to use.
The product also "just works" out of the box with a bunch of the managed AWS services we use at my company. I would not be nearly as confident in our cloud infrastructure without Datadog to let me know what's happening!
What do you dislike about the product?
There are some newer features that AWS released that I would like to see supported in Datadog's product--I have submitted a feature request but it has been pretty slow to get some of those updates made.
What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?
Datadog allows us to track our cloud infrastructure and distributed systems in a cohesive platform
Great correlation between metrics, logs, RUM
What do you like best about the product?
Correlating metrics, ease of creation of monitors/alerts, existing integrations easy to set up, lambda layers.
What do you dislike about the product?
Some documentation difficult to parse, many ways to perform same functionality for instrumenting metrics, costly logs, query customization is very difficult
What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?
Observability, correlating metrics, User Monitoring, logs aggregration
Great experience
What do you like best about the product?
Observability and extensive information logging
What do you dislike about the product?
Web interface and lost of several options
What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?
Monitoring application environment for e-commerce
APM for Troubleshooting
What do you like best about the product?
Its features of tracing and APM. It has made troubleshooting errors in the code far easier. It also connects to a wide variety of languages and operating systems. The filtering system that Datadog has built in is rather handy for finding monitors, dashboards, and events. The Watchdog AI is a helpful tool in spotting pattern you may not have noticed in your applications before, and its breakdown of the pattern and possible causes is helpful in narrowing down root cause. The monitors are simple to implement and can be linked with ServiceNow and Pagerduty rather easily.
What do you dislike about the product?
We wish there was better admin management tools for pushing out updates and giving alerts on a more timely fashion that upgrades are necessary. Communication of these changes could be a little more timely as well. Instrumentation for projects has also gotten more complex than when we first started, but it can be understandable given how much Datadog has grown.
What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?
It has helped us identify error patterns and service behavior/insight (hit rate, error rate, etc.). This has helped us troubleshoot issues for major incidents.
Datadog
What do you like best about the product?
We use Datadog for logging and incidence response. It helps us catch any alerts as soon as it comes in.
What do you dislike about the product?
There are a lot of services Datadog offers that I haven't learn a lot about.
What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?
Datadog helps us keep track of server logs and alerts so that we can response to any server outage immediately.
