Amazon CloudWatch Agent on Ubuntu Server

gistfile1.md

This is for getting metrics from the host that aren’t normally reported by EC2 such as RAM usage.

# Update Package List
sudo apt-get update

# Install CollectD (required for some metrics)
sudo apt install -y collectd

# Install the Agent
wget https://s3.amazonaws.com/amazoncloudwatch-agent/ubuntu/amd64/latest/amazon-cloudwatch-agent.deb
sudo dpkg -i -E ./amazon-cloudwatch-agent.deb

Create CloudWatch Agent Config

This file should be saved at /opt/aws/amazon-cloudwatch-agent/bin/config.json.

{
    "agent": {
        "metrics_collection_interval": 60,
        "run_as_user": "cwagent"
    },
    "metrics": {
        "aggregation_dimensions": [
            [
                "InstanceId"
            ]
        ],
        "append_dimensions": {
            "AutoScalingGroupName": "${aws:AutoScalingGroupName}",
            "ImageId": "${aws:ImageId}",
            "InstanceId": "${aws:InstanceId}",
            "InstanceType": "${aws:InstanceType}"
        },
        "metrics_collected": {
            "collectd": {
                "metrics_aggregation_interval": 60
            },
            "disk": {
                "measurement": [
                    "used_percent"
                ],
                "metrics_collection_interval": 60,
                "resources": [
                    "*"
                ]
            },
            "mem": {
                "measurement": [
                    "mem_used_percent"
                ],
                "metrics_collection_interval": 60
            },
            "statsd": {
                "metrics_aggregation_interval": 60,
                "metrics_collection_interval": 10,
                "service_address": ":8125"
            }
        }
    },
    "logs": {
        "metrics_collected": {
            "log": {
                "files": {
                    "log_level": "debug"
                }
            }
        }
    }
}

If it's on-premises

{
    "agent": {
        "metrics_collection_interval": 60,
        "run_as_user": "cwagent"
    },
    "metrics": {
        "aggregation_dimensions": [
            []
        ],
        "append_dimensions": {
            "Host": "${host}" 
        },
        "metrics_collected": {
            "collectd": {
                "metrics_aggregation_interval": 60
            },
            "disk": {
                "measurement": [
                    "used_percent"
                ],
                "metrics_collection_interval": 60,
                "resources": [
                    "*"
                ]
            },
            "mem": {
                "measurement": [
                    "mem_used_percent"
                ],
                "metrics_collection_interval": 60
            },
            "statsd": {
                "metrics_aggregation_interval": 60,
                "metrics_collection_interval": 10,
                "service_address": ":8125"
            }
        }
    },
    "logs": {
        "logs_collected": {
            "files": {
                "collect_list": [
                    {
                        "file_path": "/var/log/syslog",
                        "log_group_name": "on-prem-logs",
                        "log_stream_name": "{instance_id}"
                    },
                    {
                        "file_path": "/var/log/auth.log",
                        "log_group_name": "on-prem-logs",
                        "log_stream_name": "{instance_id}"
                    }
                ]
            }
        }
    }
}

Set CloudWatch Agent as Service

This is important to keep keep the agent running on the background and also initialize it on start.

sudo nano /etc/systemd/system/cloudwatch-agent.service

This will allow to create the service, which should have the following content:

[Unit]
Description=Amazon CloudWatch Agent
After=network.target

[Service]
Type=simple
ExecStart=/opt/aws/amazon-cloudwatch-agent/bin/amazon-cloudwatch-agent-ctl -a start
Restart=always
RestartSec=10

[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.target

Then we should launch reload the daemons and start the service.

sudo systemctl daemon-reload
sudo systemctl enable cloudwatch-agent.service
sudo systemctl start cloudwatch-agent.service

To check the status of the service we can do:

sudo systemctl status cloudwatch-agent.service