Meaning of alpha and beta?

[nzxwang]

Hi team,

The datadog_agent's multiple_outputs configuration option states:

If this is set to true, logs, metrics (beta), and traces (alpha) are sent to different outputs.

Some components like websocket_server also have a status: beta label.

What exactly do beta and alpha mean in these contexts? We'd like to better understand so that we can be better informed about which vector features to use when building our vector pipeline. For what its worth, we've been collecting metrics from datadog agents for over 2 years now and haven't realized that it was still in beta.

Thanks in advance!

[pront]

Hi @nzxwang,

This is based on an old internal process where 1 or 2 times per year we go over all non-stable components/features and evaluate their maturity. This has been a bit neglected recently but this classification still is valuable for users. We plan to refine this process and document it better in the future.

Alpha

A feature will be labeled as alpha when it is still young and there's not enough information about how it performs in production or at scale. It also may still be experimental, with incomplete functionality, potential bugs, and limited documentation. Features in the alpha phase are usually available for testing but aren't considered stable enough for production environments. When you see something marked as alpha, it suggests that the feature is being rolled out for early feedback and is expected to be improved.

Beta

A beta feature is more mature than alpha, but it still carries the caveat that it may not be fully stable. The feature is made available to a broader audience for further testing in real-world conditions. There may still be occasional bugs or unexpected behavior, but the core functionality should be relatively stable.

For what its worth, we've been collecting metrics from datadog agents for over 2 years now and haven't realized that it was still in beta.

For your case specifically, the datadog_agent is not stable in some contexts because we didn't re-evaluate it for a while. The number of open bugs (and their severity) e.g. https://github.com/vectordotdev/vector/issues?q=is%3Aissue%20state%3Aopen%20label%3A%22source%3A%20datadog_agent%22%20 is a good indicator of component health as well. One caveat is that some niche components aren't battle tested, but this is not the case for the Datadog Agent.

[jszwedko]

Note that these terms are defined in the docs here: https://vector.dev/docs/about/under-the-hood/guarantees/#stability-guarantees

[jszwedko]

Well, beta and stable are, seems like we need to add alpha.

[nzxwang]

Thank you both for all the information. As always, you are super quick and helpful.

[nzxwang]

Sorry for the late submission: #22635