cloudwatch

Amazon CloudWatch Statistics Input

This plugin will pull Metric Statistics from Amazon CloudWatch.

Amazon Authentication

This plugin uses a credential chain for Authentication with the CloudWatch API endpoint. In the following order the plugin will attempt to authenticate.

1. Assumed credentials via STS if role_arn attribute is specified (source credentials are evaluated from subsequent rules)
2. Explicit credentials from access_key, secret_key, and token attributes
3. Shared profile from profile attribute
4. Environment Variables
5. Shared Credentials
6. EC2 Instance Profile

Configuration:

[[inputs.cloudwatch]]
  ## Amazon Region (required)
  region = "us-east-1"

  ## Amazon Credentials
  ## Credentials are loaded in the following order
  ## 1) Assumed credentials via STS if role_arn is specified
  ## 2) explicit credentials from 'access_key' and 'secret_key'
  ## 3) shared profile from 'profile'
  ## 4) environment variables
  ## 5) shared credentials file
  ## 6) EC2 Instance Profile
  #access_key = ""
  #secret_key = ""
  #token = ""
  #role_arn = ""
  #profile = ""
  #shared_credential_file = ""

  ## Endpoint to make request against, the correct endpoint is automatically
  ## determined and this option should only be set if you wish to override the
  ## default.
  ##   ex: endpoint_url = "http://localhost:8000"
  # endpoint_url = ""

  # The minimum period for Cloudwatch metrics is 1 minute (60s). However not all
  # metrics are made available to the 1 minute period. Some are collected at
  # 3 minute, 5 minute, or larger intervals. See https://aws.amazon.com/cloudwatch/faqs/#monitoring.
  # Note that if a period is configured that is smaller than the minimum for a
  # particular metric, that metric will not be returned by the Cloudwatch API
  # and will not be collected by Telegraf.
  #
  ## Requested CloudWatch aggregation Period (required - must be a multiple of 60s)
  period = "5m"

  ## Collection Delay (required - must account for metrics availability via CloudWatch API)
  delay = "5m"

  ## Override global run interval (optional - defaults to global interval)
  ## Recomended: use metric 'interval' that is a multiple of 'period' to avoid
  ## gaps or overlap in pulled data
  interval = "5m"

  ## Metric Statistic Namespace (required)
  namespace = "AWS/ELB"

  ## Maximum requests per second. Note that the global default AWS rate limit is
  ## 400 reqs/sec, so if you define multiple namespaces, these should add up to a
  ## maximum of 400. Optional - default value is 200.
  ## See http://docs.aws.amazon.com/AmazonCloudWatch/latest/monitoring/cloudwatch_limits.html
  ratelimit = 200

  ## Metrics to Pull (optional)
  ## Defaults to all Metrics in Namespace if nothing is provided
  ## Refreshes Namespace available metrics every 1h
  [[inputs.cloudwatch.metrics]]
    names = ["Latency", "RequestCount"]

    ## Dimension filters for Metric.  These are optional however all dimensions
    ## defined for the metric names must be specified in order to retrieve
    ## the metric statistics.
    [[inputs.cloudwatch.metrics.dimensions]]
      name = "LoadBalancerName"
      value = "p-example"

Requirements and Terminology

Plugin Configuration utilizes CloudWatch concepts and access pattern to allow monitoring of any CloudWatch Metric.

• region must be a valid AWS Region value
• period must be a valid CloudWatch Period value
• namespace must be a valid CloudWatch Namespace value
• names must be valid CloudWatch Metric names
• dimensions must be valid CloudWatch Dimension name/value pairs

Omitting or specifying a value of '*' for a dimension value configures all available metrics that contain a dimension with the specified name to be retrieved. If specifying >1 dimension, then the metric must contain all the configured dimensions where the the value of the wildcard dimension is ignored.

Example:

[[inputs.cloudwatch.metrics]]
  names = ["Latency"]

  ## Dimension filters for Metric (optional)
  [[inputs.cloudwatch.metrics.dimensions]]
    name = "LoadBalancerName"
    value = "p-example"

  [[inputs.cloudwatch.metrics.dimensions]]
    name = "AvailabilityZone"
    value = "*"

If the following ELBs are available:

• name: p-example, availabilityZone: us-east-1a
• name: p-example, availabilityZone: us-east-1b
• name: q-example, availabilityZone: us-east-1a
• name: q-example, availabilityZone: us-east-1b

Then 2 metrics will be output:

• name: p-example, availabilityZone: us-east-1a
• name: p-example, availabilityZone: us-east-1b

If the AvailabilityZone wildcard dimension was omitted, then a single metric (name: p-example) would be exported containing the aggregate values of the ELB across availability zones.

Restrictions and Limitations

• CloudWatch metrics are not available instantly via the CloudWatch API. You should adjust your collection delay to account for this lag in metrics availability based on your monitoring subscription level
• CloudWatch API usage incurs cost - see GetMetricStatistics Pricing

Measurements & Fields:

Each CloudWatch Namespace monitored records a measurement with fields for each available Metric Statistic Namespace and Metrics are represented in snake case

• cloudwatch_{namespace}
  • {metric}_sum (metric Sum value)
  • {metric}_average (metric Average value)
  • {metric}_minimum (metric Minimum value)
  • {metric}_maximum (metric Maximum value)
  • {metric}_sample_count (metric SampleCount value)

Tags:

Each measurement is tagged with the following identifiers to uniquely identify the associated metric Tag Dimension names are represented in snake case

• All measurements have the following tags:
  • region (CloudWatch Region)
  • unit (CloudWatch Metric Unit)
  • {dimension-name} (Cloudwatch Dimension value - one for each metric dimension)

Troubleshooting:

You can use the aws cli to get a list of available metrics and dimensions:

aws cloudwatch list-metrics --namespace AWS/EC2 --region us-east-1
aws cloudwatch list-metrics --namespace AWS/EC2 --region us-east-1 --metric-name CPUCreditBalance

If the expected metrics are not returned, you can try getting them manually for a short period of time:

aws cloudwatch get-metric-statistics --namespace AWS/EC2 --region us-east-1 --period 300 --start-time 2018-07-01T00:00:00Z --end-time 2018-07-01T00:15:00Z --statistics Average --metric-name CPUCreditBalance --dimensions Name=InstanceId,Value=i-deadbeef

Example Output:

$ ./telegraf --config telegraf.conf --input-filter cloudwatch --test
> cloudwatch_aws_elb,load_balancer_name=p-example,region=us-east-1,unit=seconds latency_average=0.004810798017284538,latency_maximum=0.1100282669067383,latency_minimum=0.0006084442138671875,latency_sample_count=4029,latency_sum=19.382705211639404 1459542420000000000