Is Datadog Down?

The Datadog Agent buffers metrics locally and will forward them once service is restored, so most metric data is preserved. However, the buffer has limits, and during extended outages, some data points may be dropped. APM traces and logs are more likely to be lost since they generate higher data volumes.

No, Datadog's alert evaluation happens on their servers. If Datadog's platform is down, alert monitors cannot evaluate conditions and will not fire. This is the most dangerous aspect of a monitoring platform outage. Use a separate alerting tool for your most critical checks.

A Datadog platform outage affects the web interface, alert evaluation, and data ingestion. The agents on your servers still run and collect data. An agent issue is local to your server. Check status.datadoghq.com to determine if the problem is platform-wide or specific to your infrastructure.

Never use a monitoring tool to monitor itself. Use an independent service like FlareWarden to check Datadog's availability. Configure the alerts through a channel that doesn't depend on Datadog, such as direct email, SMS, or a separate Slack integration.