aws module

This module periodically fetches monitoring metrics from AWS Cloudwatch using GetMetricData API for AWS services. Note: extra AWS charges on GetMetricData API requests will be generated by this module.

The default metricsets are ec2, sqs, s3_request, s3_daily_storage, cloudwatch and rds.

This module uses environment variable AWS_ACCESS_KEY_ID, AWS_SECRET_ACCESS_KEY, AWS_SESSION_TOKEN and AWS_REGION that are referenced in the config file to set values that need to be configurable during deployment. It also accept optional configuration regions to specify what are the AWS regions to query metrics from. If regions parameter is not set in the config file, then by default, aws module will query metrics from all available AWS regions.

There are two different kinds of AWS credentials can be used here: access keys and temporary security credentials. AWS_ACCESS_KEY_ID and AWS_SECRET_ACCESS_KEY are the two parts of access keys. They are long-term credentials for an IAM user or the AWS account root user. Please see AWS Access Keys and Secret Access Keys for more details. temporary security credentials has a limited lifetime and consists of an access key ID, a secret access key, and a security token which typically returned from GetSessionToken. MFA-enabled IAM users would need to submit an MFA code while calling GetSessionToken. default_region identifies the AWS Region whose servers you want to send your first API request to by default. This is typically the Region closest to you, but it can be any Region. Please see Temporary Security Credentials for more details. sts get-session-token AWS CLI can be used to generate temporary credentials. For example. with MFA-enabled:

aws> sts get-session-token --serial-number arn:aws:iam::1234:mfa/your-email@example.com --token-code 456789 --duration-seconds 129600

Because temporary security credentials are short term, after they expire, the user needs to generate new ones and modify the aws.yml config file with the new credentials. Unless live reloading feature is enabled for Metricbeat, the user needs to manually restart Metricbeat after updating the config file in order to continue collecting Cloudwatch metrics. This will cause data loss if the config file is not updated with new credentials before the old ones expire. For Metricbeat, we recommend users to use access keys in config file to enable aws module making AWS api calls without have to generate new temporary credentials and update the config frequently.

IAM policy is an entity that defines permissions to an object within your AWS environment. Specific permissions needs to be added into the IAM user’s policy to authorize Metricbeat to collect AWS monitoring metrics. Please see documentation under each metricset for required permissions.

The aws module comes with a predefined dashboard. For example:

The aws.yml used for collecting metrics to display on the predefined aws dashboard is:

- module: aws
  period: 300s
  metricsets:
    - ec2
  access_key_id: '${AWS_ACCESS_KEY_ID:""}'
  secret_access_key: '${AWS_SECRET_ACCESS_KEY:""}'
  session_token: '${AWS_SESSION_TOKEN:""}'
  default_region: '${AWS_REGION:us-west-1}'
- module: aws
  period: 300s
  metricsets:
    - sqs
  access_key_id: '${AWS_ACCESS_KEY_ID:""}'
  secret_access_key: '${AWS_SECRET_ACCESS_KEY:""}'
  session_token: '${AWS_SESSION_TOKEN:""}'
  default_region: '${AWS_REGION:us-west-1}'

- module: aws
  period: 86400s
  metricsets:
    - s3_request
    - s3_daily_storage
  access_key_id: '${AWS_ACCESS_KEY_ID:""}'
  secret_access_key: '${AWS_SECRET_ACCESS_KEY:""}'
  session_token: '${AWS_SESSION_TOKEN:""}'
  default_region: '${AWS_REGION:us-west-1}'
  # regions:
  #    - us-west-1
  #    - us-east-1
- module: aws
  period: 300s
  metricsets:
    - cloudwatch
  access_key_id: '${AWS_ACCESS_KEY_ID:""}'
  secret_access_key: '${AWS_SECRET_ACCESS_KEY:""}'
  session_token: '${AWS_SESSION_TOKEN:""}'
  default_region: '${AWS_REGION:us-west-1}'
  cloudwatch_metrics:
    - namespace: AWS/EC2
    - namespace: AWS/EBS
    - namespace: AWS/Lambda
    - namespace: AWS/ECS
    - namespace: AWS/ELB

Currently, we have ec2, sqs, s3_request, s3_daily_storage and cloudwatch metricset in aws module. Collecting tags for ec2 and cloudwatch metricset is supported.

By default, Amazon EC2 sends metric data to CloudWatch every 5 minutes. With this basic monitoring, period in aws module configuration should be larger or equal than 300s. If period is set to be less than 300s, the same cloudwatch metrics will be collected more than once which will cause extra fees without getting more granular metrics. For example, in US East (N. Virginia) region, it costs $0.01/1000 metrics requested using GetMetricData. Please see AWS Cloudwatch Pricing for more details. To avoid unnecessary charges, period is preferred to be set to 300s or multiples of 300s, such as 600s and 900s. For more granular monitoring data you can enable detailed monitoring on the instance to get metrics every 1 minute. Please see Enabling Detailed Monitoring for instructions on how to enable detailed monitoring. With detailed monitoring enabled, period in aws module configuration can be any number larger than 60s. Since AWS sends metric data to CloudWatch in 1-minute periods, setting metricbeat module period less than 60s will cause extra API requests which means extra charges on AWS. To avoid unnecessary charges, period is preferred to be set to 60s or multiples of 60s, such as 120s and 180s.

The ec2 metricset comes with a predefined dashboard. For example:

Cloudwatch metrics for Amazon SQS queues are automatically collected and pushed to CloudWatch every 5 minutes, the period for sqs metricset is recommended to be 300s or multiples of 300s.

Daily storage metrics for S3 buckets are reported once per day with no additional cost. Since they are daily metrics, period for s3_daily_storage metricset is recommended to be 86400s or multiples of 86400s.

Request metrics are available at 1-minute intervals with additional charges. The s3_request metricset will give more granular data to track S3 bucket usage. The period for s3_request metricset can be set to 60s or multiples of 60s. But because of the extra charges for querying these metrics, the period is recommended to set to 86400s. The user can always adjust this to the granularity they want. Request metrics are not enabled by default for S3 buckets. Please see How to Configure Request Metrics for S3 for instructions on how to enable request metrics for each S3 bucket.

This metricset gives users the freedom to query metrics from AWS Cloudwatch with any given namespaces or specific instance with a given period. Please see AWS Services That Publish CloudWatch Metrics for a list of AWS services that publish metrics to CloudWatch.

period for rds metricset is recommended to be 60s or multiples of 60s because Amazon RDS sends metrics and dimensions to Amazon CloudWatch every minute.

The aws module supports the standard configuration options that are described in Specify which modules to run. Here is an example configuration:

metricbeat.modules:
- module: aws
  period: 300s
  metricsets:
    - ec2
  access_key_id: '${AWS_ACCESS_KEY_ID:""}'
  secret_access_key: '${AWS_SECRET_ACCESS_KEY:""}'
  session_token: '${AWS_SESSION_TOKEN:""}'
  default_region: '${AWS_REGION:us-west-1}'
- module: aws
  period: 300s
  metricsets:
    - sqs
  access_key_id: '${AWS_ACCESS_KEY_ID:""}'
  secret_access_key: '${AWS_SECRET_ACCESS_KEY:""}'
  session_token: '${AWS_SESSION_TOKEN:""}'
  default_region: '${AWS_REGION:us-west-1}'
  #regions:
  #  - us-west-1
- module: aws
  period: 86400s
  metricsets:
    - s3_request
    - s3_daily_storage
  access_key_id: '${AWS_ACCESS_KEY_ID:""}'
  secret_access_key: '${AWS_SECRET_ACCESS_KEY:""}'
  session_token: '${AWS_SESSION_TOKEN:""}'
  default_region: '${AWS_REGION:us-west-1}'
  #regions:
  #  - us-west-1
- module: aws
  period: 300s
  metricsets:
    - cloudwatch
  access_key_id: '${AWS_ACCESS_KEY_ID:""}'
  secret_access_key: '${AWS_SECRET_ACCESS_KEY:""}'
  session_token: '${AWS_SESSION_TOKEN:""}'
  default_region: '${AWS_REGION:us-west-1}'
  cloudwatch_metrics:
    - namespace: AWS/EC2
      metricname: CPUUtilization
      dimensions:
        - name: InstanceId
          value: i-0686946e22cf9494a
    - namespace: AWS/EBS
    - namespace: AWS/ELB
      tags.resource_type_filter: elasticloadbalancing
  #regions:
  #  - us-east-1
  #  - us-east-2
- module: aws
  period: 60s
  metricsets:
    - rds
  access_key_id: '${AWS_ACCESS_KEY_ID:""}'
  secret_access_key: '${AWS_SECRET_ACCESS_KEY:""}'
  session_token: '${AWS_SESSION_TOKEN:""}'
  default_region: '${AWS_REGION:us-west-1}'

The following metricsets are available: