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Amazon CloudWatch Logs

Overview​

CloudWatch Logs enables you to centralize the logs from all of your systems, applications, and AWS services that you use, in a single, highly scalable service. You can then easily view them, search them for specific error codes or patterns, filter them based on specific fields, or archive them securely for future analysis

This Plugin may generate very huge queries toward CloudWatch Logs API. Make sure to use filtering capability with --group-name and --stream-name options.

Monitoring Connector assets​

Monitored objects​

  • Log entries related to groups and underlying streams

Collected data​

Metric nameDescription
LogsRefer to any log entry that match filters. Threshold are String on top of %{message}, %{stream_name}, %{since} variables

You can filter the scope of the query using --group-name and --stream-name options.

Prerequisites​

AWS Configuration​

Configure a service account (access/secret keys combo) for which the following privileges have to be granted:

AWS PrivilegeDescription
CloudWatchLogs:DescribeLogGroupsReturns information about Log groups that meet the specified filter criteria.

Plugin dependencies​

To interact with Amazon APIs, you can use either use the awscli binary provided by Amazon or paws, a Perl AWS SDK (recommended). You must install it on every Centreon poller expected to monitor AWS Health: 

yum install perl-Paws

For now, it is not possible to use paws in the following situations:

  • if you are using a proxy to reach AWS Cloudwatch APIs.
  • to automatically add Hosts in Centreon using the Host Discovery feature

Setup​

  1. Install the Centreon package on every Centreon poller expected to monitor Amazon CloudWatch Logs:
yum install centreon-plugin-Cloud-Aws-CloudWatchLogs-Api
  1. On the Centreon Web interface, install the Amazon CloudWatch Logs Centreon Monitoring Connector on the Configuration > Monitoring Connector Manager page

Configuration​

  • Log into Centreon and add a new Host through "Configuration > Hosts".
  • Select the Cloud-Aws-CloudWatchLogs template to apply to the Host.
  • Once the template applied, some Macros marked as 'Mandatory' hereafter have to be configured:
MandatoryNomDescription
XAWSSECRETKEYAWS Secret key of your IAM role. Password checkbox must be checked
XAWSACESSKEYAWS Access key of your IAM role. Password checkbox must be checked
XAWSREGIONRegion where the instance is running
XAWSCUSTOMMODECustom mode to get metrics, 'awscli' is the default, you can also use 'paws' perl library
PROXYURLConfigure proxy URL
EXTRAOPTIONSAny extra option you may want to add to every command_line (eg. a --verbose flag)
DUMMYSTATUSHost state. Default is OK, do not modify it unless you know what you are doing
DUMMYOUTPUTHost check output. Default is 'This is a dummy check'. Customize it with your own if needed

FAQ​

How to check in the CLI that the configuration is OK and what are the main options for ?​

Once the plugin installed, log into your Centreon Poller CLI using the centreon-engine user account and test the Plugin by running the following command (Some of the parameters such as proxyurl have to be adjusted):

/usr/lib/centreon/plugins/centreon_aws_cloudwatchlogs_api.pl \
 --plugin=cloud::aws::cloudwatchlogs::plugin \
 --mode=get-logs \
 --custommode='awscli' \
 --aws-secret-key='****' \
 --aws-access-key='****' \
 --proxyurl='' \
 --region='eu-west-1' \
 --group-name='/aws/lambda/MyLambda_LogGroup' \
 --stream-name='' \
 --start-time-since='3000' \
 --unknown-status='' \
 --warning-status='' \
 --critical-status='%{message} =~ /region/i' \
 --verbose

Expected command output is shown below: 

CRITICAL: 10 problem(s) detected | 'logs'=10;;;0;
critical: log [created: 5m 11s] [stream: 2020/07/21/[$LATEST]57eb66feaf4aa7bc46gr0e91aeac2b99] [message: [INFO] 2020-07-21T14:35:31.591Z    edcea75a-41ceaa-43ae0-8fa6-1cfea0d0dc  Set REGION: eu-west-1 -- ]
[...]
critical: log [created: 10m 11s] [stream: 2020/07/21/[$LATEST]57eb66eac4cea0e91ce2b99] [message: [INFO]    2020-07-21T14:30:31.767Z    8a62ac5e-d6dd-44Da-b23e-bce42fef3  Set REGION: eu-west-1 -- ]

The command above monitors the logs (--mode=get-logs) of an AWS account identified by the usage of API credentials (--aws-secret-key='****' --aws-access-key='****').

To avoid performance issues, the LogGroup filter is mandatory (--group-name='/aws/lambda/MyLambda_LogGroup') and you can also narrow the query to filter logs created since a specific amount of time (--start-time-since='3000').

This command would trigger a CRITICAL alert if the message contains the word 'region' without being case sensitive (--critical-status='%{message} =~ /region/i').

All the filters that can be used as well as all the available thresholds parameters can be displayed by adding the --help parameter to the command:

/usr/lib/centreon/plugins/centreon_aws_cloudwatchlogs_api.pl --plugin=cloud::aws::cloudwatchlogs::plugin --mode=get-logs --help

Why do I get the following result:​

UNKNOWN: Command error: - An error occurred (AuthFailure) [...] ?​

This command result means that the credentials provided don't have enough privileges to perform the underlying AWS Operation.

UNKNOWN: 500 Can't connect to monitoring.us-east-1.amazonaws.com:443 |​

This error message means that the Centreon Plugin couldn't successfully connect to the AWS CloudWatch API. Check that no third party device (such as a firewall) is blocking the request. A proxy connection may also be necessary to connect to the API. This can be done by using this option in the command: --proxyurl='http://proxy.mycompany:8080'.