/dd-apm

name: dd-apm
description: APM - traces, services, dependencies, performance analysis.
metadata:
  version: "1.0.0"
  author: datadog-labs
  repository: https://github.com/datadog-labs/agent-skills
  tags: datadog,apm,tracing,performance,distributed-tracing,dd-apm
  globs: "**/ddtrace*,**/datadog*.yaml,**/*trace*"
  alwaysApply: "false"

Datadog APM

Distributed tracing, service maps, and performance analysis.

Requirements

Datadog Labs Pup should be installed via:

brew tap datadog-labs/pack
brew install pup

Quick Start

pup auth login
pup apm services list --env production
pup traces search --query="service:api-gateway" --from="1h"

Services

List Services

`--env` is **required** for all `apm services` commands.

pup apm services list --env production
pup apm services list --env staging

Service Statistics

pup apm services stats --env production
pup apm services stats --env production --from 4h

Service Operations and Resources

# List operations for a service
pup apm services operations --env production --service api-gateway

# List resources (endpoints) for an operation
pup apm services resources --env production --service api-gateway --name http.request

Service Dependencies

pup apm dependencies list --env production

Flow Map

# View service flow map (--query and --env required)
pup apm flow-map --query "service:api-gateway" --env production

Traces

Traces are searched via the top-level `traces` command (not under `apm`).

**Important:** APM durations are in **nanoseconds**: 1 second = 1,000,000,000 ns.

Search Traces

# By service
pup traces search --query="service:api-gateway" --from="1h"

# Errors only
pup traces search --query="service:api-gateway status:error" --from="1h"

# Slow traces (>1 second = 1000000000 ns)
pup traces search --query="service:api-gateway @duration:>1000000000" --from="1h"

# With specific tag
pup traces search --query="service:api @http.url:/api/users" --from="1h"

Aggregate Traces

# Average duration by resource
pup traces aggregate \
  --query="service:api-gateway" \
  --compute="avg(@duration)" \
  --group-by="resource_name" \
  --from="1h"

# Error count by service
pup traces aggregate \
  --query="status:error" \
  --compute="count" \
  --group-by="service" \
  --from="1h"

# p99 latency
pup traces aggregate \
  --query="service:api-gateway" \
  --compute="percentile(@duration, 99)" \
  --from="1h"

Key Metrics

| Metric | What It Measures | |--------|------------------| | `trace.http.request.hits` | Request count | | `trace.http.request.duration` | Latency | | `trace.http.request.errors` | Error count | | `trace.http.request.apdex` | User satisfaction |

⚠️ Trace Sampling

**Not all traces are kept.** Understand sampling:

| Mode | What's Kept | |------|-------------| | **Head-based** | Random % at start | | **Error/Slow** | All errors, slow traces | | **Retention** | What's indexed (billed) |

Trace Retention Costs

| Retention | Cost | |-----------|------| | Indexed spans | $$$ per million | | Ingested spans | $ per million |

**Best practice:** Only index what you need for search.

Service Level Objectives

Link APM to SLOs:

pup slos create --file slo.json

Common Queries

| Goal | Query | |------|-------| | Slowest endpoints | `pup traces aggregate --query="service:api" --compute="avg(@duration)" --group-by="resource_name" --from="1h"` | | Error rate by service | `pup traces aggregate --query="status:error" --compute="count" --group-by="service" --from="1h"` | | Throughput | `pup traces aggregate --query="service:api" --compute="count" --group-by="resource_name" --from="1h"` |

Service Config

Query service instance metadata — instance IDs, hostnames, and config IDs for all running instances of a service. Returns up to 100 instances.

# Get instance metadata for a service
pup apm service-config get --service-name my-service

# Filter by environment
pup apm service-config get --service-name my-service --env prod

# Filter by specific instance IDs
pup apm service-config get --service-name my-service --service-instance-ids "id-1,id-2"

> **Note on service identity:** `service_name` and `env` come from the SDK telemetry > pipeline and may differ from values in the Service Catalog.

Service Library Config

Query the APM tracer configuration deployed across all running instances of a service. Useful for auditing config drift — finding instances where tracing, profiling, or AppSec is misconfigured relative to the rest of the fleet.

# Get tracer config for a service
pup apm service-library-config get --service-name my-service

# Filter by environment
pup apm service-library-config get --service-name my-service --env prod

# Filter by language
pup apm service-library-config get --service-name my-service --env prod --language python

# Only show configs where instances disagree (config drift)
pup apm service-library-config get --service-name my-service --mixed

> **Note on service identity:** `service_name`, `env`, and `language_name` come from the > SDK telemetry pipeline and reflect what the tracer reports at runtime. These may differ > from values in the Service Catalog, which aggregates data from multiple sources (APM > spans, USM, infrastructure tags, manual definitions).

Troubleshooting

| Problem | Fix | |---------|-----| | No traces | Check ddtrace installed, DD_TRACE_ENABLED=true | | Missing service | Verify DD_SERVICE env var | | Traces not linked | Check trace headers propagated | | High cardinality | Don't tag with user_id/request_id | | `--env` required error | Always pass `--env` to `apm services` commands |

References/Docs

• [APM Setup](https://docs.datadoghq.com/tracing/)
• [Trace Search](https://docs.datadoghq.com/tracing/trace_explorer/)
• [Retention Filters](https://docs.datadoghq.com/tracing/trace_pipeline/