Test internal applications with Datadog's testing tunnel and private locations

This post discusses the use of private locations and testing tunnels in Datadog Synthetic Monitoring to test different types of applications that are not publicly available, such as local versions of production websites and internal applications for employees. The testing tunnel is a secure tunnel connection that requires little setup and can be used for on-demand testing in local and continuous integration (CI) environments. It leverages Datadog's command line interface (CLI) to create an end-to-end encrypted HTTP proxy between infrastructure and Datadog, enabling users to launch tests as part of their CI/CD pipelines. The tunnel is designed to support CI pipelines and local development, allowing teams to verify hotfixes or new features locally before committing code or running tests in environments reserved for CI pipelines. Private locations are Docker containers that can be deployed as custom points of presence inside an organization's infrastructure using orchestration tools like Docker Compose, Kubernetes, AWS Fargate, and Amazon ECS. They provide a durable probing service for launching tests and can be useful for customizing and managing a centralized testing tool across the organization, triggering tests on long-running environments as part of CI/CD pipelines, and regularly running tests on internal applications hosted on private networks to ensure availability SLOs are maintained. Both private locations and the testing tunnel offer unique features to support different testing goals, with private locations being more suitable for long-term testing and monitoring, while the testing tunnel is ideal for rapid, on-demand testing in short-lived environments.