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Elastic Docs ›Filebeat Reference [8.17] ›Configure Filebeat ›Configure inputs

AWS CloudWatch input

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AWS CloudWatch input

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aws-cloudwatch input can be used to retrieve all logs from all log streams in a specific log group. filterLogEvents AWS API is used to list log events from the specified log group. Amazon CloudWatch Logs can be used to store log files from Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud(EC2), AWS CloudTrail, Route53, and other sources.

A log group is a group of log streams that share the same retention, monitoring, and access control settings. You can define log groups and specify which streams to put into each group. There is no limit on the number of log streams that can belong to one log group.

A log stream is a sequence of log events that share the same source. Each separate source of logs in CloudWatch Logs makes up a separate log stream.

filebeat.inputs:
- type: aws-cloudwatch
  log_group_arn: arn:aws:logs:us-east-1:428152502467:log-group:test:*
  scan_frequency: 1m
  credential_profile_name: elastic-beats
  start_position: beginning

The aws-cloudwatch input supports the following configuration options plus the Common options described later.

log_group_arn

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ARN of the log group to collect logs from. The ARN may refer to a log group in a linked source account.

Note: log_group_arn cannot be combined with log_group_name, log_group_name_prefix and region_name properties. If set, values extracted from log_group_arn takes precedence over them.

Note: If the log group is in a linked source account and filebeat is configured to use a monitoring account, you must use the log_group_arn. You can read more about AWS account linking and cross account observability from the official documentation.

log_group_name

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Name of the log group to collect logs from.

Note: region_name is required when log_group_name is given.

log_group_name_prefix

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The prefix for a group of log group names. See include_linked_accounts_for_prefix_mode option for linked source accounts behavior.

Note: region_name is required when log_group_name_prefix is given. log_group_name and log_group_name_prefix cannot be given at the same time. The number of workers that will process the log groups under this prefix is set through the number_of_workers config.

include_linked_accounts_for_prefix_mode

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Configure whether to include linked source accounts that contains the prefix value defined through log_group_name_prefix. Accepts a boolean and this is by default disabled.

Note: Utilize log_group_arn if you desire to obtain logs from a known log group (including linked source accounts) You can read more about AWS account linking and cross account observability from the official documentation.

region_name

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Region that the specified log group or log group prefix belongs to.

number_of_workers

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Number of workers that will process the log groups with the given log_group_name_prefix. Default value is 1.

log_streams

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A list of strings of log streams names that Filebeat collect log events from.

log_stream_prefix

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A string to filter the results to include only log events from log streams that have names starting with this prefix.

start_position

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start_position allows user to specify if this input should read log files from the beginning or from the end.

  • beginning: reads from the beginning of the log group (default).
  • end: read only new messages from current time minus scan_frequency going forward

For example, with scan_frequency equals to 30s and current timestamp is 2020-06-24 12:00:00:

  • with start_position = beginning:

    • first iteration: startTime=0, endTime=2020-06-24 12:00:00
    • second iteration: startTime=2020-06-24 12:00:00, endTime=2020-06-24 12:00:30

  • with start_position = end:

    • first iteration: startTime=2020-06-24 11:59:30, endTime=2020-06-24 12:00:00
    • second iteration: startTime=2020-06-24 12:00:00, endTime=2020-06-24 12:00:30

scan_frequency

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This config parameter sets how often Filebeat checks for new log events from the specified log group. Default scan_frequency is 1 minute, which means Filebeat will sleep for 1 minute before querying for new logs again.

api_timeout

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The maximum duration of AWS API can take. If it exceeds the timeout, AWS API will be interrupted. The default AWS API timeout for a message is 120 seconds. The minimum is 0 seconds.

api_sleep

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This is used to sleep between AWS FilterLogEvents API calls inside the same collection period. FilterLogEvents API has a quota of 5 transactions per second (TPS)/account/Region. By default, api_sleep is 200 ms. This value should only be adjusted when there are multiple Filebeats or multiple Filebeat inputs collecting logs from the same region and AWS account.

latency

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Some AWS services send logs to CloudWatch with a latency to process larger than aws-cloudwatch input scan_frequency. This case, please specify a latency parameter so collection start time and end time will be shifted by the given latency amount.

aws credentials

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In order to make AWS API calls, aws-cloudwatch input requires AWS credentials. Please see AWS credentials options for more details.

AWS Permissions

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Specific AWS permissions are required for IAM user to access aws-cloudwatch:

cloudwatchlogs:DescribeLogGroups
logs:FilterLogEvents

Metrics

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This input exposes metrics under the HTTP monitoring endpoint. These metrics are exposed under the /inputs path. They can be used to observe the activity of the input.

Metric Description

log_events_received_total

Number of CloudWatch log events received.

log_groups_total

Logs collected from number of CloudWatch log groups.

cloudwatch_events_created_total

Number of events created from processing logs from CloudWatch.

api_calls_total

Number of API calls made total.

Common options

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The following configuration options are supported by all inputs.

enabled

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Use the enabled option to enable and disable inputs. By default, enabled is set to true.

tags

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A list of tags that Filebeat includes in the tags field of each published event. Tags make it easy to select specific events in Kibana or apply conditional filtering in Logstash. These tags will be appended to the list of tags specified in the general configuration.

Example:

filebeat.inputs:
- type: aws-cloudwatch
  . . .
  tags: ["json"]

fields

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Optional fields that you can specify to add additional information to the output. For example, you might add fields that you can use for filtering log data. Fields can be scalar values, arrays, dictionaries, or any nested combination of these. By default, the fields that you specify here will be grouped under a fields sub-dictionary in the output document. To store the custom fields as top-level fields, set the fields_under_root option to true. If a duplicate field is declared in the general configuration, then its value will be overwritten by the value declared here.

filebeat.inputs:
- type: aws-cloudwatch
  . . .
  fields:
    app_id: query_engine_12

fields_under_root

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If this option is set to true, the custom fields are stored as top-level fields in the output document instead of being grouped under a fields sub-dictionary. If the custom field names conflict with other field names added by Filebeat, then the custom fields overwrite the other fields.

processors

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A list of processors to apply to the input data.

See Processors for information about specifying processors in your config.

pipeline

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The ingest pipeline ID to set for the events generated by this input.

The pipeline ID can also be configured in the Elasticsearch output, but this option usually results in simpler configuration files. If the pipeline is configured both in the input and output, the option from the input is used.

The pipeline is always lowercased. If pipeline: Foo-Bar, then the pipeline name in Elasticsearch needs to be defined as foo-bar.

keep_null

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If this option is set to true, fields with null values will be published in the output document. By default, keep_null is set to false.

index

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If present, this formatted string overrides the index for events from this input (for elasticsearch outputs), or sets the raw_index field of the event’s metadata (for other outputs). This string can only refer to the agent name and version and the event timestamp; for access to dynamic fields, use output.elasticsearch.index or a processor.

Example value: "%{[agent.name]}-myindex-%{+yyyy.MM.dd}" might expand to "filebeat-myindex-2019.11.01".

publisher_pipeline.disable_host

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By default, all events contain host.name. This option can be set to true to disable the addition of this field to all events. The default value is false.

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