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Amazon SES

Overview​

Amazon Simple Email Service (SES) is a cost-effective, flexible, and scalable email service that enables developers to send mail from within any application.

There is no charge for the Amazon SES metrics reported in CloudWatch. They're provided as part of the Amazon SES service.

The Amazon SES Centreon Monitoring Connector uses the Amazon Cloudwatch APIs to collect the related metrics and status.

Monitoring Connector assets​

Monitored objects​

  • SES sending activity

Collected metrics​

More information about collected metrics is available in the official Amazon documentation: https://docs.aws.amazon.com/ses/latest/DeveloperGuide/monitor-sending-activity

Metric nameDescription
ses.emails.sent.countNumber of sent emails
ses.emails.delivered.countNumber of successfully delivered emails
ses.emails.rejected.rateRate of rejected emails
ses.emails.spam.rateRate of emails marked as spam

Prerequisites​

AWS Configuration​

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

AWS PrivilegeDescription
cloudwatch:getMetricStatisticsGet metrics values from Cloudwatch AWS/SES namespace

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 resources: 

yum install perl-Paws

For now, it is not possible to use paws if you are using a proxy to reach AWS Cloudwatch APIs.

Setup​

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

Configuration​

Host​

  • Log into Centreon and add a new Host through "Configuration > Hosts".
  • Select the Cloud-Aws-Ses-custom 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_ses_api.pl \
    --plugin=cloud::aws::ses::plugin \
    --mode=email \
    --custommode=awscli \
    --aws-secret-key='*******************' \
    --aws-access-key='**********' \
    --region='eu-west-1' \
    --proxyurl='http://myproxy.mycompany.org:8080' \
    --timeframe='600' \
    --period='60' \
    --critical-emails-spam=1: \
    --verbose

Expected command output is shown below: 

 OK: 'SES' Statistic 'Average' Metrics rate of rejected sent emails: 0.00, number of emails successfully delivered: 30.00, rate of sent emails marked as spam: 0.00, number of sent emails: 30.00 | 'SES~average#ses.emails.rejected.rate'=0;;;; 'SES~average#ses.emails.delivered.count'=30;;;; 'SES~average#ses.emails.spam.rate'=0;;;; 'SES~average#ses.emails.sent.count'=30;;;;

The command above monitors the SES sending activity (--mode=emails) of an AWS account identified by the usage of API credentials (--aws-secret-key='****' --aws-access-key='****'). The calculated metrics are an average of values on a 600 secondes / 10 min period (--timeframe='600') with one sample per 60s / 1 minute (--period='60').

This command would trigger a 'CRITICAL' alert if at least one sent email is marked as 'spam' (--critical-emails-spam=1: ) during the sample period.

All the available thresholds parameters can be displayed by adding the
--help parameter to the command:

/usr/lib/centreon/plugins/centreon_aws_ses_api.pl \
    --plugin=cloud::aws::ses::plugin \
    --mode=emails \
    --help

Why do I get the following result:​

UNKNOWN: No metrics. Check your options or use --zeroed option to set 0 on undefined values ?​

This command result means that Amazon Cloudwatch does not have any value for the requested period.

This result can be overriden by adding the --zeroed option in the command. This will force a value of 0 when no metric has been collected and will prevent the UNKNOWN error message.

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.eu-west-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'.