Monitoring Quickstart

DigitalOcean Monitoring is a free, opt-in service that gathers and displays metrics about Droplet-level resource utilization. Monitoring supports configurable alert policies with integrated email and Slack notifications to help you track the operational health of your infrastructure.


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:

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 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.