Based on the Jan 2025 DD Fundamentals Certification Exam Guide.

• Hardware & OS
  • Know what CPU, RAM, and storage do
  • Understand how to use Linux CLI (e.g., 'cat', 'uname', 'lsb_release', 'df')
• File Formats & Scripting
  • Recognize & read: 'YAML', 'JSON', 'Python', and shell scripts ('.sh')
• Networking Basics
  • Understand 'IP addresses', 'subnets', and protocols: 'HTTP', 'TCP', 'UDP'

• Agent Installation
  • Install and verify Agent on Linux, Docker, and cloud environments
• Agent Configuration
  • Edit 'datadog.yaml'
  • Understand Agent hostname ('hostname', 'hostname_fqdn')
  • Know how to run Agent: 'datadog-agent status', 'check', 'configcheck', 'health'
• Agent Discovery
  • Understand Autodiscovery using labels/annotations
  • Learn how the Agent discovers services in Docker and Kubernetes
• Integrations
  • Install common integrations (e.g., MySQL, Apache, NGINX)
  • Configuration files: usually in

    etc/datadog-agent/conf.d/<integration_name>.d/

• Datadog Connectivity
  • Know which ports the Agent uses (e.g., '8125/UDP' for DogStatsD)
  • Familiarity with IP address requirements (outbound)
• Keys
  • Differentiate: API Key (required for Agent), Application Key (used for API access)

• DogStatsD
  • Send custom metrics using DogStatsD
  • Syntax: 'statsd.increment(“my.metric”, tags=[“env:prod”])'
• Metrics & Timeseries
  • Understand metric types: 'gauge', 'counter', 'rate'
  • Metric resolution and time rollups
• Tags & Metadata
  • Apply and search using tags ('env:prod', 'service:api')
  • Tagging best practices: use consistent keys, avoid cardinality explosion

• Agent Commands
  • 'status', 'check', 'configcheck', 'health', 'flare'
• Agent Logs
  • Found at '/var/log/datadog/'
• Check Config
  • Use 'configcheck' to verify YAML formatting issues
  • Use 'check' to manually run a specific integration check

• Dashboards
  • Create timeboards and screenboards
  • Add widgets: query values, timeseries, toplists
• Monitors
  • Types: metric, log, service check, process, composite
  • Set alert thresholds and notifications (email, Slack, webhooks)
• Host Map
  • Visualize hosts by tags, monitor status, or custom metadata

• Expect 75 scored multiple choice questions + 15 unscored trial items
• Max duration: 2 hours

• Review output of 'datadog-agent status' and sample 'datadog.yaml'
• Get comfortable identifying metric types and troubleshooting YAML
• Practice building a dashboard or monitor in a free Datadog account