Jean-Mathieu Saponaro

As you might know, Datadog allows you to monitor your entire infrastructure by collecting, aggregating, and graphing performance metrics from any part of your stack: servers, databases, containers, cache engines…

But did you know that you can use Datadog to monitor pretty much anything? For example, you can:

• Write an Agent Check to collect metrics and events from any data source

• Run an HTTP check to verify if a website is up or down

• Instrument your applications to send custom metrics via API or using DogStatsD; that’s how many of our customers apply Datadog’s power to custom metrics such as counting specific user actions or monitoring proprietary infrastructure

Monitoring Pokémon GO: The recipe

Take a handful of Pokémon GO enthusiasts,

Simmer with the backend troubles users encountered during the launch of the game, plus a pinch of the frustration it created in our souls as trainers,

Stir with our driving obsession to monitor everything,

Bake with Datadog’s powerful features during a weekend side project,

And tadaaaa, this is what you get:

Every time Pokémon GO won’t work correctly, before you smash your phone on the nearest tree, you can now check www.IsPokemonGODownOrNot.com to see if it’s just you or if Pokémon GO is down for everyone.

• Have Niantic’s servers been double slapped resulting in down time?

• Is their latency abnormally high (probably due to Sleep Powder effect)?

• Are logins working properly (whether you are in the U.S. or in Europe), or are they taking way too long?

• Can you place a Lure Module right now without risking servers going down before the end of the 30 minutes (according to recent availability)?

Awesome! How does this actually work?

Server availability is based on HTTP checks against a Niantic data endpoint. These also calculate latency.

Then in order to measure login availability, both with Google and Pokémon Trainer Club accounts, we log in to Pokémon GO every 30 seconds, using this handmade API behind the scenes. We have servers in Europe and in the U.S., so we monitor both regions.

With this dashboard telling you if Pokémon GO is down or not, you have no excuse to not become the very best. Now go catch them all!

www.IsPokemonGODownOrNot.com

PS: if you want to instrument your app and use Datadog to monitor it or your infrastructure, you can sign up here.