Cloudwatch output plugin
editCloudwatch output plugin
edit- Plugin version: v3.0.8
- Released on: 2018-04-06
- Changelog
Getting Help
editFor questions about the plugin, open a topic in the Discuss forums. For bugs or feature requests, open an issue in Github. For the list of Elastic supported plugins, please consult the Elastic Support Matrix.
Description
editThis output lets you aggregate and send metric data to AWS CloudWatch
Summary:
editThis plugin is intended to be used on a logstash indexer agent (but that
is not the only way, see below.) In the intended scenario, one cloudwatch
output plugin is configured, on the logstash indexer node, with just AWS API
credentials, and possibly a region and/or a namespace. The output looks
for fields present in events, and when it finds them, it uses them to
calculate aggregate statistics. If the metricname
option is set in this
output, then any events which pass through it will be aggregated & sent to
CloudWatch, but that is not recommended. The intended use is to NOT set the
metricname option here, and instead to add a CW_metricname
field (and other
fields) to only the events you want sent to CloudWatch.
When events pass through this output they are queued for background
aggregation and sending, which happens every minute by default. The
queue has a maximum size, and when it is full aggregated statistics will be
sent to CloudWatch ahead of schedule. Whenever this happens a warning
message is written to logstash’s log. If you see this you should increase
the queue_size
configuration option to avoid the extra API calls. The queue
is emptied every time we send data to CloudWatch.
Note: when logstash is stopped the queue is destroyed before it can be processed. This is a known limitation of logstash and will hopefully be addressed in a future version.
Details:
editThere are two ways to configure this plugin, and they can be used in combination: event fields & per-output defaults
Event Field configuration…
You add fields to your events in inputs & filters and this output reads
those fields to aggregate events. The names of the fields read are
configurable via the field_*
options.
Per-output defaults… You set universal defaults in this output plugin’s configuration, and if an event does not have a field for that option then the default is used.
Notice, the event fields take precedence over the per-output defaults.
At a minimum events must have a "metric name" to be sent to CloudWatch.
This can be achieved either by providing a default here OR by adding a
CW_metricname
field. By default, if no other configuration is provided
besides a metric name, then events will be counted (Unit: Count, Value: 1)
by their metric name (either a default or from their CW_metricname
field)
Other fields which can be added to events to modify the behavior of this
plugin are, CW_namespace
, CW_unit
, CW_value
, and
CW_dimensions
. All of these field names are configurable in
this output. You can also set per-output defaults for any of them.
See below for details.
Read more about AWS CloudWatch, and the specific of API endpoint this output uses, PutMetricData
Cloudwatch Output Configuration Options
editThis plugin supports the following configuration options plus the Common Options described later.
Setting | Input type | Required |
---|---|---|
No |
||
No |
||
No |
||
No |
||
No |
||
No |
||
No |
||
No |
||
No |
||
No |
||
No |
||
No |
||
No |
||
string, one of |
No |
|
No |
||
No |
||
No |
||
string, one of |
No |
|
No |
Also see Common Options for a list of options supported by all output plugins.
access_key_id
edit- Value type is string
- There is no default value for this setting.
This plugin uses the AWS SDK and supports several ways to get credentials, which will be tried in this order:
-
Static configuration, using
access_key_id
andsecret_access_key
params in logstash plugin config -
External credentials file specified by
aws_credentials_file
-
Environment variables
AWS_ACCESS_KEY_ID
andAWS_SECRET_ACCESS_KEY
-
Environment variables
AMAZON_ACCESS_KEY_ID
andAMAZON_SECRET_ACCESS_KEY
- IAM Instance Profile (available when running inside EC2)
aws_credentials_file
edit- Value type is string
- There is no default value for this setting.
Path to YAML file containing a hash of AWS credentials.
This file will only be loaded if access_key_id
and
secret_access_key
aren’t set. The contents of the
file should look like this:
:access_key_id: "12345" :secret_access_key: "54321"
batch_size
edit- Value type is number
-
Default value is
20
How many data points can be given in one call to the CloudWatch API
dimensions
edit- Value type is hash
- There is no default value for this setting.
The default dimensions [ name, value, … ] to use for events which do not have a CW_dimensions
field
field_dimensions
edit- Value type is string
-
Default value is
"CW_dimensions"
The name of the field used to set the dimensions on an event metric
The field named here, if present in an event, must have an array of
one or more key & value pairs, for example…
add_field => [ "CW_dimensions", "Environment", "CW_dimensions", "prod" ]
or, equivalently…
add_field => [ "CW_dimensions", "Environment" ]
add_field => [ "CW_dimensions", "prod" ]
field_metricname
edit- Value type is string
-
Default value is
"CW_metricname"
The name of the field used to set the metric name on an event The author of this plugin recommends adding this field to events in inputs & filters rather than using the per-output default setting so that one output plugin on your logstash indexer can serve all events (which of course had fields set on your logstash shippers.)
field_namespace
edit- Value type is string
-
Default value is
"CW_namespace"
The name of the field used to set a different namespace per event Note: Only one namespace can be sent to CloudWatch per API call so setting different namespaces will increase the number of API calls and those cost money.
field_unit
edit- Value type is string
-
Default value is
"CW_unit"
The name of the field used to set the unit on an event metric
field_value
edit- Value type is string
-
Default value is
"CW_value"
The name of the field used to set the value (float) on an event metric
metricname
edit- Value type is string
- There is no default value for this setting.
The default metric name to use for events which do not have a CW_metricname
field.
Beware: If this is provided then all events which pass through this output will be aggregated and
sent to CloudWatch, so use this carefully. Furthermore, when providing this option, you
will probably want to also restrict events from passing through this output using event
type, tag, and field matching
namespace
edit- Value type is string
-
Default value is
"Logstash"
The default namespace to use for events which do not have a CW_namespace
field
proxy_uri
edit- Value type is string
- There is no default value for this setting.
URI to proxy server if required
queue_size
edit- Value type is number
-
Default value is
10000
How many events to queue before forcing a call to the CloudWatch API ahead of timeframe
schedule
Set this to the number of events-per-timeframe you will be sending to CloudWatch to avoid extra API calls
region
edit-
Value can be any of:
us-east-1
,us-east-2
,us-west-1
,us-west-2
,eu-central-1
,eu-west-1
,eu-west-2
,ap-southeast-1
,ap-southeast-2
,ap-northeast-1
,ap-northeast-2
,sa-east-1
,us-gov-west-1
,cn-north-1
,ap-south-1
,ca-central-1
-
Default value is
"us-east-1"
The AWS Region
secret_access_key
edit- Value type is string
- There is no default value for this setting.
The AWS Secret Access Key
session_token
edit- Value type is string
- There is no default value for this setting.
The AWS Session token for temporary credential
timeframe
edit- Value type is string
-
Default value is
"1m"
Constants aggregate_key members Units How often to send data to CloudWatch This does not affect the event timestamps, events will always have their actual timestamp (to-the-minute) sent to CloudWatch.
We only call the API if there is data to send.
See the Rufus Scheduler docs for an explanation of allowed values
unit
edit-
Value can be any of:
Seconds
,Microseconds
,Milliseconds
,Bytes
,Kilobytes
,Megabytes
,Gigabytes
,Terabytes
,Bits
,Kilobits
,Megabits
,Gigabits
,Terabits
,Percent
,Count
,Bytes/Second
,Kilobytes/Second
,Megabytes/Second
,Gigabytes/Second
,Terabytes/Second
,Bits/Second
,Kilobits/Second
,Megabits/Second
,Gigabits/Second
,Terabits/Second
,Count/Second
,None
-
Default value is
"Count"
The default unit to use for events which do not have a CW_unit
field
If you set this option you should probably set the "value" option along with it
value
edit- Value type is string
-
Default value is
"1"
The default value to use for events which do not have a CW_value
field
If provided, this must be a string which can be converted to a float, for example…
"1", "2.34", ".5", and "0.67"
If you set this option you should probably set the unit
option along with it
Common Options
editThe following configuration options are supported by all output plugins:
codec
edit- Value type is codec
-
Default value is
"plain"
The codec used for output data. Output codecs are a convenient method for encoding your data before it leaves the output, without needing a separate filter in your Logstash pipeline.
enable_metric
edit- Value type is boolean
-
Default value is
true
Disable or enable metric logging for this specific plugin instance by default we record all the metrics we can, but you can disable metrics collection for a specific plugin.
id
edit- Value type is string
- There is no default value for this setting.
Add a unique ID
to the plugin configuration. If no ID is specified, Logstash will generate one.
It is strongly recommended to set this ID in your configuration. This is particularly useful
when you have two or more plugins of the same type, for example, if you have 2 cloudwatch outputs.
Adding a named ID in this case will help in monitoring Logstash when using the monitoring APIs.
output { cloudwatch { id => "my_plugin_id" } }