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From Datadog DBM to Obsfly

Per-DB pricing at $105/mo gets brutal past 30 hosts.

Why teams switch

  • Per-DB pricing at $105/mo gets brutal past 30 hosts.
  • No BYOC — your query telemetry leaves your VPC.
  • Forecast-band alerting isn't first-class; you tune thresholds by hand.
  • AI insights surface at the host level, not on individual signatures.

What Datadog DBM is genuinely good at

Fairness signal — useful in renewal conversations.

  • Best-in-class APM correlation if you already live in Datadog.
  • Mature wait-event analytics on Postgres and SQL Server.
  • Excellent integrations breadth — every cloud provider, every queue.

Migration playbook

  1. Step 1

    Map your monitored DB inventory

    Pull host list from your Datadog org via the /api/v1/hosts endpoint. Filter to ones with the `dbm` integration. The count drives your Obsfly tier choice.

  2. Step 2

    Install the Obsfly agent in parallel

    Single Go static binary. Drop it on the same host as the Datadog Agent — they don't conflict. Confirm telemetry in Obsfly with both running for 7-14 days.

  3. Step 3

    Translate your Datadog monitors

    Threshold monitors map 1:1. Anomaly Detection monitors port to Obsfly's forecast-violation rules with no tuning — the band is learned per metric.

  4. Step 4

    Cut over alerting channels

    Point Slack/PagerDuty/webhook destinations at Obsfly. Run for one week of overlap to confirm parity, then disable Datadog DBM at next renewal.

Pitfalls to avoid

  • Don't disable Datadog DBM mid-incident week — keep parallel until you trust it.
  • If you run Datadog APM, keep it; Obsfly doesn't replace APM.
  • Watch for orphan Datadog dashboards referencing DBM metrics — they go blank.

FAQ

Is the agent the same kind of thing as the Datadog Agent?
Conceptually yes — a small process that scrapes Postgres / MySQL / Mongo / Redis stats and ships them. Implementation is a single Go binary, not Python like Datadog's.
Can we keep Datadog APM and run Obsfly only for DB?
Yes. That's the most common setup. Obsfly speaks Datadog's tag schema, so service: tags align.
How do we keep query text from leaving our VPC?
BYOC tier. The data plane runs in your AWS / GCP / Azure account; only the control plane is hosted by Obsfly.

Ready to switch?

Book a 30-minute migration call.

We'll spec your parallel-run plan together, agree on success criteria, and quote your first 30-day deal.

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From Datadog DBM to Obsfly — migration guide · Obsfly