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Unified Service Tagging cleanup for KSM, global env, version#36678

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Unified Service Tagging cleanup for KSM, global env, version#36678
JacksonDavenport wants to merge 5 commits into
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jack.davenport/ust-containers-cleanup

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What does this PR do? What is the motivation?

https://datadoghq.atlassian.net/browse/TEEP-6589

Three main changes to this doc relative to each commit:

  1. The Kubernetes State Metrics (KSM) portion is no longer relevant as you don't have to do any specific KSM configurations since the move to KSM Core. The KSM Check will look for and use the labels automatically.
  2. On the Kubernetes / SSI docs we do make note that you can just add a global tags config to set your span metadata. Have double checked/tested to confirm that this works for the default behavior. It is a common enough recommendation so makes sense to make more official.
  3. The snippet on automatic version tagging was duplicated in all 3 container tabs (Kubernetes, Docker, ECS), so extracted it out into the single section to simplify and avoid drift between them. Otherwise content wise it was the same (plus some minor link fixes)

Merge instructions

Merge readiness:

  • Ready for merge

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Additional notes

May look at further changes to UST in the SSI doc in the near future, but good to do this first pass of this doc. To make those future changes easier.

@JacksonDavenport JacksonDavenport requested a review from a team as a code owner May 14, 2026 00:07
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Preview links (active after the build_preview check completes)

Modified Files

@janine-c janine-c self-assigned this May 14, 2026
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Looks great! Just some minor writing feedback and some questions about some things I thought we might want to clarify. Let me know if you have any questions or want to chat about any of my comments!

Comment thread content/en/getting_started/tagging/unified_service_tagging.md Outdated
Comment thread content/en/getting_started/tagging/unified_service_tagging.md Outdated
Comment thread content/en/getting_started/tagging/unified_service_tagging.md Outdated
Comment thread content/en/getting_started/tagging/unified_service_tagging.md Outdated
Comment thread content/en/getting_started/tagging/unified_service_tagging.md Outdated
To get the full range of unified service tagging when using Kubernetes, add environment variables to both the deployment object level and the pod template spec level:
To get the full range of unified service tagging when using Kubernetes, add the labels to both the parent workload level and the pod template level.

The `DD_ENV`, `DD_SERVICE`, and `DD_VERSION` environment variables are used by APM enabled applications. These environment variables can be set manually or by the [Kubernetes's downward API][2] as seen below. If you are using the Cluster Agent's [Admission Controller][1] to mutate your pods, those three environment variables are automatically injected to match your labels.
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Suggested change
The `DD_ENV`, `DD_SERVICE`, and `DD_VERSION` environment variables are used by APM enabled applications. These environment variables can be set manually or by the [Kubernetes's downward API][2] as seen below. If you are using the Cluster Agent's [Admission Controller][1] to mutate your pods, those three environment variables are automatically injected to match your labels.
The `DD_ENV`, `DD_SERVICE`, and `DD_VERSION` environment variables are used by APM-enabled applications. You can set these environment variables manually or using [Kubernetes's downward API][2] as seen below. If you are using the Cluster Agent's [Admission Controller][1] to mutate your pods, those three environment variables are automatically injected to match your labels.

This is a bit of a long page; can we add some links when we refer to things below, so we can help users get to the relevant information?

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Added your suggested changes separately for this, but wasn't quite sure if you were looking for something else regarding the links. Those two should resolve to the

Otherwise ready for re-review

Comment thread content/en/getting_started/tagging/unified_service_tagging.md Outdated
@janine-c janine-c assigned janine-c and unassigned janine-c May 14, 2026
JacksonDavenport and others added 2 commits May 14, 2026 14:57
Co-authored-by: Janine Chan <64388808+janine-c@users.noreply.github.com>
@JacksonDavenport JacksonDavenport requested a review from janine-c May 14, 2026 22:33
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Excellent, thanks for the quick edit! One last thing I want to figure out and then we're good to go!

##### Full configuration

To get the full range of unified service tagging when using Kubernetes, add environment variables to both the deployment object level and the pod template spec level:
To get the full range of unified service tagging in Kubernetes, add the following labels to both the parent workload and the pod template.
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I find the use of "following" here confusing, because we don't list the labels; we talk about environment variables instead. Can we clarify the relationship between them?

To get the full range of unified service tagging when using Kubernetes, add environment variables to both the deployment object level and the pod template spec level:
To get the full range of unified service tagging in Kubernetes, add the following labels to both the parent workload and the pod template.

The `DD_ENV`, `DD_SERVICE`, and `DD_VERSION` environment variables are used by APM-enabled applications. You can set these environment variables manually or using the [Kubernetes's downward API][2] as seen below. If you are using the Cluster Agent's [Admission Controller][1] to mutate your pods, those three environment variables are automatically injected to match your labels.
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Suggested change
The `DD_ENV`, `DD_SERVICE`, and `DD_VERSION` environment variables are used by APM-enabled applications. You can set these environment variables manually or using the [Kubernetes's downward API][2] as seen below. If you are using the Cluster Agent's [Admission Controller][1] to mutate your pods, those three environment variables are automatically injected to match your labels.
The `DD_ENV`, `DD_SERVICE`, and `DD_VERSION` environment variables are used by APM-enabled applications. You can set these environment variables manually or using the [Kubernetes's downward API][2]. If you are using the Cluster Agent's [Admission Controller][1] to mutate your pods, those three environment variables are automatically injected to match your labels.

Think we're good to remove this reference to "below" if we have a link!

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