Overview

Connect to Alibaba Cloud to collect metrics and logs from your Alibaba Cloud services.

Note: Due to Alibaba Cloud’s deprecation of Cloud Monitor support for Container Service metrics, you cannot collect metrics for clusters created after September 30, 2025. For more information, see the Alibaba Cloud deprecation notice.

All use of Datadog Services in (or in connection with environments within) mainland China is subject to the disclaimer published in the Restricted Service Locations section on our website.

Setup

Installation

Navigate to the Datadog-Alibaba Cloud integration configuration tile and press add account.

Configuration

Fill out the following parameters to integrate Datadog with the Alibaba Cloud API:

• Account Id

Find this by hovering over the avatar on the top right of the Alibaba Cloud console and selecting Security Settings. The account ID is displayed on the top of that page.

• Access Key Id & Access Key Secret

In your Alibaba Cloud Account:

1. Ensure that Resource Center is enabled

2. Create a new user in the RAM tab with the following parameters:

   • User Login Name: Datadog
   • Display Name: Datadog

3. Select Permanent AccessKey:

   

4. After clicking OK, copy and paste the AccessKeyID and AccessKeySecret in the Datadog-Alibaba Cloud integration tile and click install integration.

   

5. In your Alibaba Cloud Account, select Add Permissions for the user you just created, then add the following system policy:

   ReadOnlyAccess
   

   To collect Container Service for Kubernetes (ACK) metrics using Managed Service for Prometheus, attach a custom policy with the following statement so Datadog can install the ack-arms-prometheus add-on on your clusters:

   {
     "Version": "1",
     "Statement": [
       {
         "Effect": "Allow",
         "Action": "cs:InstallClusterAddons",
         "Resource": "*"
       }
     ]
   }
   

6. Press Update, and after around ~15 minutes, the metrics seen in the Metrics tab of the Datadog-Alibaba Cloud integration tile starts appearing in your metric explorer page tagged with any custom tags you add to your resources and tags found here:

   • kvstore/redis DescribeInstances
   • ECS DescribeInstances
   • DescribeDBInstances
   • DescribeLoadBalancers

7. Optional - Set Optionally Limit Metrics Collection in your Datadog-Alibaba Cloud integration tile. This comma separated list of Alibaba Cloud tags (in the form <KEY:VALUE>) defines a filter to use when collecting metrics from Alibaba Cloud. Wildcards such as ? (for single characters) and * (for multiple characters) can be used. Only hosts that match one of the defined labels are imported into Datadog—the rest are ignored. Hosts matching a given label can also be excluded by adding ! before the label.

Log collection

Datadog collects logs from Alibaba Cloud Simple Log Service (SLS). After you enable log collection, Datadog ingests all available logs from SLS.

Enable log collection

In the Datadog-Alibaba Cloud integration tile, expand the Log collection section and toggle Enable log collection on. Logs from SLS appear in the Log Explorer with the source alibaba-cloud.

Filter logs by tag

By default, Datadog collects all available logs from SLS. To limit collection, use one or both of the optional filter fields under Log collection:

• Project tag filters: Limit log collection to SLS projects with specified tags.
• Logstore tag filters: Limit log collection to logstores with specified tags.

Note: Datadog applies project tag filters first, then logstore tag filters. If a project is excluded by its tag filter, all of its logstores are excluded as well.

Tag filter syntax

The Project tag filters and Logstore tag filters fields accept comma-separated key:value Alibaba Cloud tags. Prefix a tag with ! to negate it. The comma separator behaves differently depending on the tag types used:

• Positive tags only: OR logic—included if the project or logstore has any of the listed tags.
• Negative tags only (prefixed with !): OR logic—excluded if any of the negated tags is present.
• Mixed positive and negative tags: AND logic—must satisfy all listed conditions to be included.

Examples:

• datadog:monitored,env:prod*: include if either tag is present.
• !env:staging,!testing:true: exclude if either tag is present.
• datadog:monitored,!env:staging: include only if the datadog:monitored tag is present and the env:staging tag is absent.

Data Collected

Metrics

Events

Events from Alibaba Cloud are collected on a per Alibaba Cloud-service basis.

Troubleshooting

Need help? Contact Datadog support.

Further Reading

Additional helpful documentation, links, and articles:

Unified observability for Alibaba Cloud with DatadogBLOG