AppDynamics vs. Datadog

AppDynamics is well suited to large IT organizations ie telcos where there is legacy combined with modern systems ie containerized environments and cloud deployments, mobile, web as well as onprem. AppDynamics can follow the transactions into all of these areas and provide a single view on the health of the systems.

Datadog is a no-brainer for any environment that relies on multiple servers. Even for one server, it's so much better to use for monitoring and alert capability than anything else I remember looking at before we started using Datadog. Teams can even use it to track their progress of investigating an alert so multiple people aren't unknowingly looking into the same exact issue unnecessarily.

Incentivized

• you can easily identify where there is a problem in the code at the time of error.
• With Network Visibility, you can see how much bandwidth your applications are using between nodes.
• You can easily detect SQL statements or stored procedures that consume most of the system resources and get statistical data.

Incentivized

• APIs, the ability to interact with the data we pull into data dog is key. We port the information over to Servicenow, so the ability to pull everything into DataDog, then Servicenow, is a key component of our success here at Wayfair.
• Simple Interface - clean, useful, effective. Allows users to use DataDog for one reason, get work done.
• Lightweight agent on hosts

Incentivized

• Synergy with Logic Monitor which we use for our infrastructure monitoring.
• a fair amount of continual configuration to prevent false positives
• There are a lot of technologies that App Dynamics covers and documentation is a bit of a weak spot in finding clear documentation, configuring dashboards, etc.

Incentivized

• User interface could be improved in some areas, looking for host information and the agent install link takes a bit of time.
• Configuration of the agent is generally done via a config file which is a pro and a con. It would be nice to have some UI to configure various agent options.
• Billing isn't entirely straightforward, they could use more reports to figure out the source of your monthly costs.

Incentivized

its working for us, we are familiar and comfortable with the tool and its proven valuable/indispensable in helping evaluate our code.

Incentivized

The user interface is quite intuitive with the exception of the network map. As a deployer of software, it is trivial to setup.

Incentivized

AppDynamics has its own community site that includes forums and a knowledge base. On the forums, you can converse with other members of the community and ask technical questions as you have them. Though this forum isn’t filled with people there are active members for you to gain some valuable insights.

Incentivized

The support team usually gets it right. We did have a rather complicate issue setting up monitoring on a domain controller. However, they are usually responsive and helpful over chat. The downside would be I don’t think they have any phone support. If that is important to you this might not be a good fit.

Incentivized

I have not engaged with similar application management platform in the organization. AppDynamics is the most efficient product that I have come across in monitoring performance of apps. It has transformed hidden analytics into actionable insights that have accelerated positive business growth. It has optimized the entire infrastructure and created conducive working environment that is secure and free from ransomware attacks. The running cost and deployment capacity is affordable to many business enterprise that are ready to transform business operations with advanced technology.

Incentivized

We are still trying other products, but people still like Datadog. After setting up a dashboard, it's great for monitoring instances on Datadog. Also, the DevOps team had a good time setting up Datadog. It means Datadog was way easier to set up compared to those others.

Incentivized

• Platform map drilldown capabilities and code-level visibility helped us to find the root cause of problems faster
• Threshold alerts made proactive problem handling easier
• Data capture module helped us to link technical data with business data and support customers far more efficiently

Incentivized

• One of our critical production databases went down a couple of weeks back. Just because we had the Datadog monitoring enabled for that database, Datadog sent the alerts to PagerDuty and we were instantly notified via pager and email alert. We could act right away and bring up the database within a few mins.
• Ability to create custom screenboards have allowed us to track the critical and warning alerts in front of our eyes all the time

Incentivized