For AI agents: The documentation index is at https://docs.digitalocean.com/llms.txt. Markdown versions of pages use the same URL with index.html.md in place of the HTML page (for example, append index.html.md to the directory path instead of opening the HTML document).

Upgrading to the Prometheus-based agent ensures that your Droplet continues to receive extended metrics such as disk I/O, bandwidth, and CPU utilization. It also uses fewer resources and supports current monitoring features.

If you don’t upgrade, your Droplet stops receiving extended metrics, which reduces visibility into resource usage and can affect alerting and monitoring.

Check If Legacy Agent Installed

Before upgrading your metrics agent, check if your Droplet is still using the legacy agent by running the following command:

ps aux | grep do-agent

If the output includes /opt/digitalocean/bin/do-agent, your Droplet uses the Prometheus-based agent. If it includes /usr/bin/droplet-agent, another older agent path, or no output, your Droplet is likely using the legacy agent or the agent isn’t running, and you may need to upgrade the metrics agent.

Alternatively, you can run the following command to check the installed agent version:

/opt/digitalocean/bin/do-agent --version

If the command fails or returns a version earlier than 3.x, your Droplet is using the legacy agent and you need to upgrade the metrics agent.

Upgrade Metrics Agent

To upgrade from the legacy metrics agent to the Prometheus-based metrics agent, first uninstall the legacy metrics agent. Then, either download the installation script, inspect it, and run it manually or install it by configuring the repository directly.

If you want to upgrade multiple Droplets at once, use the upgrade-droplets.sh script in the do-agent GitHub repository. This requires an SSH key and a DigitalOcean API token. You can also use the Ansible-based batch upgrade available on Ansible Galaxy.

Verify Metrics Agent Installed

To check whether the do-agent systemd service is active, run the following command:

systemctl status do-agent

If the metrics agent is active, the output confirms that it’s installed, running, and set to start automatically on boot:

● do-agent.service - The DigitalOcean Monitoring Agent
     Loaded: loaded (/etc/systemd/system/do-agent.service; enabled; ...)
     Active: active (running) since Wed 2025-06-18 19:14:50 UTC; 35s ago
...
   Main PID: 4675 (do-agent)
...
             └─4675 /opt/digitalocean/bin/do-agent --syslog

Then, check whether the agent process is running by searching for processes with the name do-agent:

ps aux | grep do-agent

If the metrics agent is running, the output includes a line that shows do-agent is running as a background process like this:

do-agent    4675  0.0  0.3 ... ?  Ssl  19:14   0:00 /opt/digitalocean/bin/do-agent --syslog
root        4733  0.0  0.0 ... pts/0  S+  19:15   0:00 grep --color=auto do-agent

To see your Droplet’s metrics, exit your Droplet’s terminal session, and then click its Insights tab. Metrics appear a few minutes after the metrics agent starts reporting data.

If the service isn’t running or these commands return no output, contact support for help troubleshooting the installation.