AWS Unified CloudWatch Agent and Beanstalk

amazon-web-services

AWS offers a newly developed log collector and CloudWatch uploader, as described here: https://docs.aws.amazon.com/AmazonCloudWatch/latest/logs/UseCloudWatchUnifiedAgent.html

My question is that how to make use of this new agent using Beanstalk? Currently we are using EBS solution: 64bit Amazon Linux 2018.03 v2.7.1 running Java 8
As this is EBS, I don't want to migrate our EC2 machines by hand, because they are regularly thrown away and being recreated by EBS (rendering manual migration pointless), so my understanding is that, I need a new solution/AMI version that has this unified agent instead of the old one.
Our motivation is that the old version is buggy, and sometimes it misses to upload random chunks of rotated logs, leading to completely missing logs of 1 hours. This bug is verified by AWS, and instead of fixing this issue, they wrote a complete new application and left the old one without fixes.

This article refers to an "old" agent (awslogs), that is included in the mentioned AMI as built in. I tried to read AWS documentation, but I did not find any official AMI versions offering the new version.

I am really hoping that an official AMI offers this uploader, and if so, what is this AMI? Thanks!

ps.: I would not create a custom AMI for the purpose, as we want to stick to official Amazon Linux AMIs.

Best Answer

You'll need to install it by providing a script in .ebextensions and following the steps outlined in the command line installation instructions for the unified agent: https://docs.aws.amazon.com/AmazonCloudWatch/latest/monitoring/install-CloudWatch-Agent-commandline-fleet.html

    files:
      "/opt/elasticbeanstalk/hooks/appdeploy/post/install_cw_unified_agent.sh":
        mode: "000755"
        owner: root
        group: root
        content: |
          # download agent
          wget https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/amazoncloudwatch-agent-us-east-1/amazon_linux/amd64/latest/amazon-cloudwatch-agent.rpm

          # install CW agent
          sudo rpm -U ./amazon-cloudwatch-agent.rpm

          # run the agent
          sudo /opt/aws/amazon-cloudwatch-agent/bin/amazon-cloudwatch-agent-ctl -a fetch-config -m ec2 -c file:/opt/aws/amazon-cloudwatch-agent/etc/amazon-cloudwatch-config.json -s

You'll need a configuration file as well which you can find in the docs here: https://docs.aws.amazon.com/en_pv/AmazonCloudWatch/latest/monitoring/CloudWatch-Agent-Configuration-File-Details.html

Here's the sample config from the docs:

    {
      "agent": {
        "metrics_collection_interval": 10,
        "logfile": "/opt/aws/amazon-cloudwatch-agent/logs/amazon-cloudwatch-agent.log"
      },
      "metrics": {
        "metrics_collected": {
          "cpu": {
            "resources": [
              "*"
            ],
            "measurement": [
              {"name": "cpu_usage_idle", "rename": "CPU_USAGE_IDLE", "unit": "Percent"},
              {"name": "cpu_usage_nice", "unit": "Percent"},
              "cpu_usage_guest"
            ],
            "totalcpu": false,
            "metrics_collection_interval": 10,
            "append_dimensions": {
              "customized_dimension_key_1": "customized_dimension_value_1",
              "customized_dimension_key_2": "customized_dimension_value_2"
            }
          },
          "disk": {
            "resources": [
              "/",
              "/tmp"
            ],
            "measurement": [
              {"name": "free", "rename": "DISK_FREE", "unit": "Gigabytes"},
              "total",
              "used"
            ],
             "ignore_file_system_types": [
              "sysfs", "devtmpfs"
            ],
            "metrics_collection_interval": 60,
            "append_dimensions": {
              "customized_dimension_key_3": "customized_dimension_value_3",
              "customized_dimension_key_4": "customized_dimension_value_4"
            }
          },
          "diskio": {
            "resources": [
              "*"
            ],
            "measurement": [
              "reads",
              "writes",
              "read_time",
              "write_time",
              "io_time"
            ],
            "metrics_collection_interval": 60
          },
          "swap": {
            "measurement": [
              "swap_used",
              "swap_free",
              "swap_used_percent"
            ]
          },
          "mem": {
            "measurement": [
              "mem_used",
              "mem_cached",
              "mem_total"
            ],
            "metrics_collection_interval": 1
          },
          "net": {
            "resources": [
              "eth0"
            ],
            "measurement": [
              "bytes_sent",
              "bytes_recv",
              "drop_in",
              "drop_out"
            ]
          },
          "netstat": {
            "measurement": [
              "tcp_established",
              "tcp_syn_sent",
              "tcp_close"
            ],
            "metrics_collection_interval": 60
          },
          "processes": {
            "measurement": [
              "running",
              "sleeping",
              "dead"
            ]
          }
        },
        "append_dimensions": {
          "ImageId": "${aws:ImageId}",
          "InstanceId": "${aws:InstanceId}",
          "InstanceType": "${aws:InstanceType}",
          "AutoScalingGroupName": "${aws:AutoScalingGroupName}"
        },
        "aggregation_dimensions" : [["ImageId"], ["InstanceId", "InstanceType"], ["d1"],[]],
        "force_flush_interval" : 30
      },
      "logs": {
        "logs_collected": {
          "files": {
            "collect_list": [
              {
                "file_path": "/opt/aws/amazon-cloudwatch-agent/logs/amazon-cloudwatch-agent.log",
                "log_group_name": "amazon-cloudwatch-agent.log",
                "log_stream_name": "amazon-cloudwatch-agent.log",
                "timezone": "UTC"
              },
              {
                "file_path": "/opt/aws/amazon-cloudwatch-agent/logs/test.log",
                "log_group_name": "test.log",
                "log_stream_name": "test.log",
                "timezone": "Local"
              }
            ]
          }
        },
        "log_stream_name": "my_log_stream_name",
        "force_flush_interval" : 15
      }
    }
Related Topic