Effective monitoring: Prometheus or Datadog – what is your go-to?

To effectively monitor your data, and ensure that your database, network, and systems are working as they should, you need to have the right tools for the job regardless of whether you are handling matters internally or utilising managed services from a trusted third-party.

Prometheus and Datadog are two popular services for operational monitoring, businesses worldwide have adopted them to assist with SRE and DevOps processes, with Datadog seeing a 76% growth in 2021 with an increase in customers of 32% year-on-year, and Prometheus having recorded in 2023 they are now being used by more than 7,423 companies across the world.

The choice between the platforms will largely depend on what you need to do, and how you want to achieve the tasks. We are taking a comparative look at them both, to help you determine what you need.

The benefits and drawbacks of Datadog

Founded in 2010, Datadog is an observability service, designed for cloud-scale applications, which provides monitoring for servers, databases, tools, and other services through the use of a Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) data analytic platform.

Some of the key features offed by Datadog include:

• Network monitoring
• Security monitoring
• Application performance monitoring
• Real user monitoring
• Log management

Pros of Datadog

• Real-time performance insights for applications, services, and servers.
• Easy to setup and start using.
• Rapid identification and troubleshooting of issues.
• UI is configurable.

Cons of Datadog

• The more applications are integrated, the more issues there can be with performance and speed.
• Due to the number of features, there can be inconsistencies in availability.
• There is no mobile app, although you can arrange for text alerts to be sent to a mobile.
• The service is only available on the cloud.

The benefits and drawbacks of Prometheus

Released in 2012, Prometheus is a free software application which records metrics in a time-series database built using an HTTP pull model. It has flexible queries, and real-time alerting, and is used for event monitoring and alerts.

Some of the key features that Prometheus offers includes:

• Multi-dimensional data model
• Alert manager
• Flexible query language
• Pull model data collection

Pros of Prometheus

• Data can be aggregated in real-time with PromQL (Prometheus Query Language).
• The software is open source.
• Known for having operational simplicity.
• Works with custom metrics to support rich queries and can interoperate with other cloud-native ecosystems.

Cons of Prometheus

• Initial configuration and setup can be challenging (development intensive) and time consuming.
• Customer service response times can be slow.
• Platform has been known to have upward scalability issues.

How Datadog and Prometheus compare

Whilst both platforms offer useful tools and approaches to handling DevOps, SRE, and data science needs, it is important to determine what functionality you need for your project, and how best the service suits your tasks.

Whilst both platforms provide operational monitoring, there is not much in the way of similarities between them, and making your decision will largely depend on how you use your SaaS tools, what you want to achieve, and what functions you are most comfortable utilising in your data monitoring.

Key differences

• Set up and Cost
  Prometheus is a free open-source tool, whereas Datadog has different pricing tiers available depending on usage.
  When it comes to set up, Datadog requires sign up to an account and then installation of the agent onto your host. Prometheus is considered to be more difficult as it requires a certain level of configuration in order to get started, and thus needs a higher level of technological understanding as well as a good grasp of what the platform will be used for (in order to assure the correct setup).
• Monitoring
  There is a considerable difference in monitoring and collecting data from both platforms. Datadog has monitoring products that range from Log Management, Security Monitoring, and Network Monitoring to APM and Infrastructure Monitoring.
  Prometheus allows data to be captured as time-series metrics, which can then be aggregated to give insights into system behaviour/s.
  Datadog allows for deep tracing of applications and stacks, and data can be bound from various sources to create a single visual on the customisable dashboard.
  Prometheus uses query language in order to draw simple graphs and metrics, but also uses a multi-dimensional data model to define metrics with unique names or tags.
• Visualisations and user experience
  When using Prometheus, many users opt to integrate it with Grafana (a secondary open-source web-based visualisation tool) in order to manage the limitations of Prometheus’s functionality and UI.
  Datadog offers a high level of customisation with ‘widgets’ that allow users to build their own dashboards and customise them to their specific needs.
• Integrations with the platforms
  Prometheus has a large number of third-party plugins available to provide additional functionality and facilitation of usage with the tool, ranging from hardware drivers, issue trackers, messaging systems, and more.
  Datadog has more than 400 plugins to customise the platform, and does not require the use of third-party integration in order to customise the program.

Deciding which platform is best for you

In order to determine which is the best option for your business needs, it is important that you look at a variety of different factors, such as:

• Pricing
• Scalability
• UI and usability
• Functionality
• Reliability of customisation
• Preferred development techniques
• Predicted usage

Both platforms can offer valuable resources and enhancements to a project, but if you are not sure which would be better for your project, our team are happy to discuss your needs and provide you with expert advice.

Ardent operational monitoring and support service

At Ardent, we continuously invest in the learning of new technologies in order to deliver the best solutions to our clients with the most fitting tech stack. With the Ardent R&D initiative, our teams have deep dived into both Prometheus and Datadog to explore how they technologies can be used for multiple use cases, find out about their findings here:

Driving Ardent Innovation Series: Prometheus and Grafana

Driving Ardent Innovation Series: Datadog

If you are looking for data and software experts that will monitor legacy applications and databases, cloud-based data ecosystems and more, then our operational monitoring and support are for you.

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