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Connect Datadog Agent

Send Datadog Agent v1 metric series to Nightingale, with the API-version and authentication boundaries made explicit.

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This page lets hosts with Datadog Agent keep their collectors and send compatible metric series to Nightingale.

Compatibility

Nightingale v9 registers /datadog/api/v1/series. It is not a complete Datadog backend and does not provide a v2 series receiver. The settings below are checked against Datadog Agent 7.70.0. Verify that other versions still support v1 before using them.

Configure​

Edit /etc/datadog-agent/datadog.yaml on Linux:

api_key: "replace-with-agent-key"
dd_url: "http://127.0.0.1:17000/datadog"
use_v2_api:
  series: false

Replace the URL and key. End dd_url at /datadog; the Agent appends the API path itself.

Changing dd_url alone is insufficient: Agent 7.70.0 enables v2 series by default. Setting use_v2_api.series: false selects the v1 JSON format Nightingale receives.

Enable [HTTP.APIForAgent].Enable on the server. If [HTTP.APIForAgent.BasicAuth] is configured, Nightingale matches the request's api_key against its configured password values. A web-login token is not interchangeable with that key.

Without server authentication, Nightingale does not check this value, although the Agent still requires a valid nonempty configuration.

Restart and verify​

sudo systemctl restart datadog-agent
sudo datadog-agent status
sudo journalctl -u datadog-agent -n 100 --no-pager

Expected result: the Agent starts and sends series to /datadog/api/v1/series without authentication or routing errors. In Nightingale's explorer, select the actual destination store and confirm that collected metrics appear and keep receiving new samples.

Nightingale replaces dots and hyphens in metric names with underscores: system.cpu.user becomes system_cpu_user. Inspect both Agent and Nightingale logs; a running service alone does not prove delivery.

Success on auxiliary compatibility endpoints does not prove that logs, APM, events or all service checks were stored. This guide covers the v1 metric-series path only. If your Agent cannot use it, choose Categraf or a verified Prometheus collection path.

Next​

Implementation: Pushgw routes and series parsing and authentication.

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