Deploying the Datadog cartridge on OpenShift allows seamless monitoring of OpenShift v2 gears by automatically integrating metrics into Datadog, making it easy to set up graphs and alerts. Although the cartridge is primarily for OpenShift v2, custom metrics can be sent from OpenShift v3 apps using the DogStatsD image. Datadog collects and correlates metrics from OpenShift gears and other infrastructure components, enabling comprehensive monitoring and alerting. Alerts can be configured to notify via email, HipChat, PagerDuty, and other endpoints, and can be set to trigger on specific performance thresholds, like CPU usage. The system is designed to scale with applications, automatically adjusting to monitor aggregate performance across multiple gears. Installation of the Datadog Agent on OpenShift gears requires setting the DATADOG_API_KEY and adding the cartridge to your gear, with further configurations available through editing YAML files. The integration provides a unified view of system performance, helping identify correlations between OpenShift performance and other infrastructure events.