Dynatrace vs Datadog: Installing the agents
Note: Do read the Dynatrace vs Datadog: basics article first.
What are agents?
Agents are the software tools that sends data from the instrumented component. Most of the time, the agents are installed on servers or deployed as operators if the scope of monitoring is Kubernetes and the containers within it.
To compare products lets have a baseline operating system and install application in a later point.
Setting the stage:
Firstly, Let’s ensure we have identical servers and thus in this case I have the latest Ubuntu version released in 2021 April (21.04). Both of them are running in the same Cloud Provider and has the same specifications. The hostnames have been modified to reflect the tool that is being compared. In the below case, we are going to deploy Dynatrace.
Similarly, I have another instance named datadog where we would use Datadog to instrument the apps.
Dynatrace: Installing agent:
After signing up, you would be asked to install the Dynatrace OneAgent available in the Dynatrace Hub section.
Dynatrace OneAgent can be installed on variety of host platforms like shown in the below list:
- Linux
- Unix
- Windows
- AIX
- z/OS
- Solaris
In addition, it can be installed through orchestration tools like Ansible and Kubernetes as well through the OneAgent operator.
In our case, I choose Linux and I get to see the instructions. Note that the command includes the unique tenant(masked for security reasons) of Dynatrace associated with my personal account. This means Dynatrace isolates the environment dedicated for my account in the backend.
Installing OneAgent on the server:
In this case, I logged into the server where we will have Dynatrace and tried to run the commands as instructed above.
Its a simple process, download a shell script that contains the installation instruction, optionally verify the integrity of the package and finally run the script to install. See screenshots where I run these commands(yellow) and the resulting output(red)
You can confirm if the installation is successful by clicking ‘Check deployment status’
Installing Datadog agent on Ubuntu 21.04
Datadog offers multiple options but the simplest is the one line command.
The full command is pasted below:
DD_AGENT_MAJOR_VERSION=7 DD_API_KEY=███████████████████████████ DD_SITE="datadoghq.com" bash -c "$(curl -L https://s3.amazonaws.com/dd-agent/scripts/install_script.sh)"In short, it sets few variables first which includes the Version, API Key and the datadog site details which are injected into the configuration files when the shell script runs which is downloaded from S3
Once installed, you should see the agent running within minutes.
Conclusion:
Installing the Dynatrace and Datadog agent on a Linux server is very similar and very simple. Dynatrace appears to deploy additional resources to isolate a tenants environment whereas Datadog appears to isolate in a separate way.
Datadog shows the various flavours of Linux with separate sections for Debian, Ubuntu, Amazon Linux, CentOS/Red Hat, Fedora and SUSE. If you look closely they all download the same script and I wonder why they don’t brand that together as Linux.
Nevertheless, it makes it appear as though Datadog can be installed in more agents but if you take a closer look Dynatrace can even be installed on z/OS.
Overall, both can be easily installed in popular operating systems. Dynatrace OneAgent can be installed on z/OS based Mainframes as well.
Continue comparing:
Dynatrace vs Datadog: Basics
Dynatrace vs Datadog: Metrics out of the Box
Dynatrace vs Datadog: Monitoring — the real deal
Dynatrace vs Datadog: SaaS and On-prem deployment offerings
Disclaimer: The author has been a Dynatrace and Datadog user in his previous job with variety of clients. Both products are constantly adding features and some features would change in the future. The author did this review during his interview process with both the companies. The author now works for Dynatrace.
