Migrating from Datadog: observability checklist

A practical sequence for planning, testing, and de-risking a move away from Datadog.

STEP 1

Baseline telemetry

Capture logs, metrics, traces, retention, cardinality, alert count, and dashboard ownership.

STEP 2

Use portable instrumentation such as OpenTelemetry where it fits, reducing future vendor lock-in.

STEP 3

Send a controlled slice of telemetry to the new stack and compare dashboards, alerts, and incident workflows.

STEP 4

Port critical alerts and on-call escalation first. Retire the old path only after production validation.

Keep the old path available until the new workflow has passed functional, operational, and rollback tests.