Monitoring Quickstart
Validated on 29 Mar 2023 • Last edited on 14 Apr 2025
DigitalOcean Monitoring is a free, opt-in service that lets you track Droplet resource usage in real time, visualize performance metrics, and receive alerts via email or Slack to proactively manage your infrastructure’s health.
To use DigitalOcean Monitoring with your Droplets, you need to install the metrics agent. Once you install the agent, you can view enhanced graphs and set up monitoring alerts.
Install the Metrics Agent
You can install the agent automatically when you create a new Droplet from the control panel, the API, or the CLI:
-
When creating Droplets from the control panel, on the Droplet creation page, find the We recommend these options section and click Enable Monitoring.
-
When creating Droplets with the API, set the
monitoring
parameter totrue
. -
When creating Droplets with the CLI’s
doctl compute droplet create
command, use the--enable-monitoring
flag.
To install the agent on an existing Droplet, SSH into the Droplet and run the installation script:
curl -sSL https://repos.insights.digitalocean.com/install.sh | sudo bash
Check that the Agent is Running
You can verify that the agent is running by searching for the process named do-agent
:
ps aux | grep do-agent
The agent is running if the output of the command looks like this:
do-agent 3238 0.0 0.2 791812 17280 ? Ssl 15:24 0:00 /opt/digitalocean/bin/do-agent --syslog
Once the agent is running, you can click the Droplet’s name in the control panel to go to its Graphs tab and view the enhanced graphs.
Create Resource Alerts
Once you install the metrics agent on your Droplets, you can create resource alerts, which notify you via email or Slack when the chosen metric is above or below a threshold you set.
-
When creating resource alerts from the control panel, use the resource alert creation page.
-
When creating resource alerts from the API, use the
/v2/monitoring/alerts
endpoint. -
When creating resource alerts from the CLI, use
doctl monitoring alert create
.
When you create a resource alert, choose the metric and threshold that you want to receive alerts for, the Droplets or tags to apply the resource alert to, and how you would like to receive alerts (email, Slack, or both).
You can view all resource alerts on the Monitoring page in the control panel, as well as any triggered and resolved alerts.