# Datadog\_metrics output plugin: Is it possible to send metrics of type "distribution"?

**URL:** <https://discuss.elastic.co/t/datadog-metrics-output-plugin-is-it-possible-to-send-metrics-of-type-distribution/184793>\
**Category:** Logstash\
**Tags:** elastic-stack-monitoring\
**Created:** [June 7, 2019, 4:46pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/datadog-metrics-output-plugin-is-it-possible-to-send-metrics-of-type-distribution/184793 "2019-06-07T16:46:40Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 3\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![opcitymatt](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/o/bbe5ce/32.png) [@opcitymatt](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/opcitymatt)\
**Post date:** [June 7, 2019, 4:46pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/datadog-metrics-output-plugin-is-it-possible-to-send-metrics-of-type-distribution/184793/1 "2019-06-07T16:46:40Z")

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Hi there,

We've been using Logstash to parse nginx logs and send request timing to CloudWatch, and we'd like to start using Datadog as our metric destination. The most useful metric type for this sort of data is "distribution", which is still in beta, and I don't see it listed in the datadog\_metrics documentation—it only mentions "counter" and "gauge".

Is it possible to send metrics from this output plugin as "distribution" type? We haven't tried it yet, but I figured I'd ask. I've included a link to Datadog's documentation on this metric type.

> **[Distribution metrics](https://docs.datadoghq.com/graphing/metrics/distributions/)**
>
> Compute global percentiles across your entire dataset.

Thanks!

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**Author:** ![Badger](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/elastic/user_avatar/discuss.elastic.co/badger/32/25190_2.png) [@Badger](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/Badger)\
**Post date:** [June 7, 2019, 5:00pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/datadog-metrics-output-plugin-is-it-possible-to-send-metrics-of-type-distribution/184793/2 "2019-06-07T17:00:52Z")

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You will [not](https://github.com/logstash-plugins/logstash-output-datadog_metrics/blob/f4a72079ce767a7907bb47c307c4a3e5923356d4/lib/logstash/outputs/datadog_metrics.rb#L29) be able to set it the metric\_type to distribution using an option, but you might be able to do so by adding a [metric\_type] field to the event and leaving the metric\_type option to its default value of "%{metric\_type}". You would have to try it and see if it works.

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**Author:** ![system](https://us1.discourse-cdn.com/elastic/original/3X/1/a/1ac57faf039f6b580b3f104ef42a2a89e41014de.png) [@system](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/system)\
**Post date:** [July 5, 2019, 5:11pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/datadog-metrics-output-plugin-is-it-possible-to-send-metrics-of-type-distribution/184793/3 "2019-07-05T17:11:25Z")

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