Monitor Amazon Web Services with CloudWatch metrics
Follow this guide to start ingesting data remotely from Amazon CloudWatch.
Its main focus is on infrastructure monitoring of AWS services: Dynatrace monitoring AWS services via CloudWatch.
See What's next? for Full-Stack and Log Monitoring of your AWS services.
After you have established the initial monitoring, you can add, remove, or modify service monitoring using the Dynatrace web UI, at scale, or using the Dynatrace API.
To learn the measurements collected for each of the AWS services, see:
The Amazon Web Services infrastructure monitoring provides metrics from CloudWatch, infrastructure data available via public AWS API, and specific events. The data is collected in five-minute intervals.
Cost of monitoring
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Each service monitored by Dynatrace through CloudWatch, as well as log processing and analysis, consumes DDUs.
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Amazon may charge you extra for CloudWatch metric queries. For details on these additional costs, please consult Amazon CloudWatch pricing online documentation.
Monitoring prerequisites
There are three prerequisites for the AWS monitoring setup:
Dynatrace admin permissions
ActiveGate capable of AWS monitoring
AWS monitoring policy and role-based authentication
Dynatrace admin permissions
To manage AWS monitoring configuration, you need permissions to read and modify the builtin:cloud.aws schema.
- Both
settings:objects:readandsettings:objects:writeare required. - They are included in the Change monitoring settings permissions.
- Read-only access is not supported.
See Manage user permissions with roles for details on how to manage and set permissions.
ActiveGate capable of AWS Monitoring
To monitor Amazon Web services, Dynatrace needs to be able to connect to the Amazon CloudWatch API and query it periodically. At least one ActiveGate needs to be able to connect to Amazon CloudWatch to perform the monitoring tasks. Your ActiveGate needs to be able to connect to the endpoints listed below.
From Dynatrace version 1.267+, only role-based access can be used. Key-based authorization is no longer available for new credentials. For existing key-based credentials, you can keep using keys indefinitely. We recommend switching to role-based authentication using the dedicated button on the configuration page. Dynatrace automatically checks the configuration to ensure the correct configuration of roles.
Key-based authentication is allowed only for AWS GovCloud and China partitions.
Allow ActiveGate to access AWS URLs
The integration accesses the following AWS API endpoints, so they must be accessible from your ActiveGate:
-
AWS Security Token Service (AWS STS)
https://sts.amazonaws.com/AWS STS is a global endpoint by default. When using a regional endpoint,
sts.<REGION>.amazonaws.comneeds to be accessible.See AWS STS Regionalized endpoints in AWS official documentation for the recommended regional STS endpoint configuration.
recommended Use the AWS
configfile to configure regional STS endpoint. -
AWS Resource Groups Tagging
https://tagging.<REGION>.amazonaws.com/ -
Amazon CloudWatch
https://monitoring.<REGION>.amazonaws.com/ -
Amazon EC2
ec2.<REGION>.amazonaws.com
Other endpoints may be required depending on the services you need to monitor.
Consult the tables below for endpoints specific to each service you might want to monitor and for AWS regions supported by Dynatrace AWS Monitoring.
autoscaling.<REGION>.amazonaws.comlambda.<REGION>.amazonaws.comelasticloadbalancing.<REGION>.amazonaws.comdynamodb.<REGION>.amazonaws.comec2.<REGION>.amazonaws.comrds.<REGION>.amazonaws.coms3.<REGION>.amazonaws.comacm-pca.<REGION>.amazonaws.comapigateway.<REGION>.amazonaws.comapprunner.<REGION>.amazonaws.comappstream2.<REGION>.amazonaws.comappsync.<REGION>.amazonaws.comathena.<REGION>.amazonaws.comcloudfront.amazonaws.comcloudhsmv2.<REGION>.amazonaws.comcloudsearch.<REGION>.amazonaws.comcodebuild.<REGION>.amazonaws.comdatasync.<REGION>.amazonaws.comdax.<REGION>.amazonaws.comdms.<REGION>.amazonaws.comdirectconnect.<REGION>.amazonaws.comecs.<REGION>.amazonaws.comelasticfilesystem.<REGION>.amazonaws.comeks.<REGION>.amazonaws.comelasticache.<REGION>.amazonaws.comelasticbeanstalk.<REGION>.amazonaws.comus-gov-west-1us-gov-east-1us-east-1us-east-2us-west-1us-west-2eu-west-1eu-west-2eu-west-3eu-central-1eu-central-2eu-north-1eu-south-1eu-south-2ap-east-1ap-south-1ap-south-2ap-southeast-1ap-southeast-2ap-southeast-3ap-southeast-4ap-northeast-1ap-northeast-2ap-northeast-3sa-east-1cn-north-1cn-northwest-1ca-central-1ca-west-1il-central-1me-central-1me-south-1af-south-1us-iso-east-1us-isob-east-1us-iso-west-1The most frequent cause of certificate issues with the TLS interception proxy is a missing proxy's CA certificate in the ActiveGate truststore.
If you're still having proxy issues, see:
Make sure that the URLs are whitelisted. Otherwise, you might get communication or timeout errors.
AWS monitoring policy and role-based authentication
To perform these steps, you need to have AWS admin privileges.
The AWS monitoring policy defines the minimal scope of permissions you need to give to Dynatrace to monitor the services running in your AWS account. Create it once and use it any time when enabling Dynatrace access to your AWS account. If you don't want to add permissions to all services, and just select permissions for certain services, consult the table below. The table contains a set of permissions that are required for all AWS cloud services, a list of optional permissions specific to that service.
"cloudwatch:GetMetricData""cloudwatch:GetMetricStatistics""cloudwatch:ListMetrics""sts:GetCallerIdentity""tag:GetResources""tag:GetTagKeys""ec2:DescribeAvailabilityZones"
cloudwatch:GetMetricData,cloudwatch:GetMetricStatistics,cloudwatch:ListMetrics,sts:GetCallerIdentity,tag:GetResources,tag:GetTagKeys,ec2:DescribeAvailabilityZonesacm-pca:ListCertificateAuthoritiesapigateway:GETapprunner:ListServicesappstream:DescribeFleetsappsync:ListGraphqlApisathena:ListWorkGroupsrds:DescribeDBClustersautoscaling:DescribeAutoScalingGroupsautoscaling:DescribeAutoScalingGroupscloudfront:ListDistributionscloudhsm:DescribeClusterscloudsearch:DescribeDomainscodebuild:ListProjectseks:ListClustersdatasync:ListTasksdax:DescribeClustersdms:DescribeReplicationInstancesrds:DescribeDBClustersdirectconnect:DescribeConnectionsdynamodb:ListTablesdynamodb:ListTables,dynamodb:ListTagsOfResourceec2:DescribeVolumesec2:DescribeVolumesec2:DescribeInstancesec2:DescribeSpotFleetRequestsecs:ListClustersecs:ListClusterselasticache:DescribeCacheClusterselasticbeanstalk:DescribeEnvironmentselasticfilesystem:DescribeFileSystemselasticmapreduce:ListClusterses:ListDomainNameselastictranscoder:ListPipelineselasticloadbalancing:DescribeInstanceHealth,elasticloadbalancing:DescribeListeners,elasticloadbalancing:DescribeLoadBalancers,elasticloadbalancing:DescribeRules,elasticloadbalancing:DescribeTags,elasticloadbalancing:DescribeTargetHealthevents:ListEventBusesfsx:DescribeFileSystemsgamelift:ListFleetsglue:GetJobsinspector:ListAssessmentTemplateskafka:ListClusterskinesisanalytics:ListApplicationsfirehose:ListDeliveryStreamskinesis:ListStreamskinesisvideo:ListStreamslambda:ListFunctionslambda:ListFunctions,lambda:ListTagslex:GetBotselasticloadbalancing:DescribeInstanceHealth,elasticloadbalancing:DescribeListeners,elasticloadbalancing:DescribeLoadBalancers,elasticloadbalancing:DescribeRules,elasticloadbalancing:DescribeTags,elasticloadbalancing:DescribeTargetHealthlogs:DescribeLogGroupsmediaconnect:ListFlowsmediaconvert:DescribeEndpointsTo get the information required for comprehensive AWS cloud-computing monitoring, you have to authorize Dynatrace to access your Amazon metrics. Dynatrace will identify all the virtualized infrastructure components in your AWS environment and collect performance metrics related to those components.
Next, select the deployment model that best describes your environment and follow the procedure for that model.
Deployment with existing ActiveGate
You won't be able to monitor the AWS cloud services without an AWS-hosted Environment ActiveGate.
The instructions below are applicable whether or not the account hosting your ActiveGate is the same as your monitored account. In a typical setup, you need to create two CloudFormation stacks using CloudFormation templates:
- A CloudFormation stack from the account hosting your ActiveGate, containing the following resources:
- A role for your Environment ActiveGate hosted in your AWS infrastructure, on an Amazon EC2 host.
- Its attached policy, defining the monitored account permissions.
- A CloudFormation stack from the monitored account, containing the following resources:
- A dedicated monitoring role for Dynatrace in your AWS account.
- Its attached policy, defining the Dynatrace authentication permissions to your AWS environment.
To monitor multiple accounts, add all resources to the Resource array in the template in Create a role for ActiveGate on the account that hosts ActiveGate and repeat Create a monitoring role for Dynatrace on your monitored account to create a stack for each monitored account.
You will need:
- An ActiveGate installed on an Amazon EC2 host. It must be able to assume a role within your AWS account that allows it to read the Dynatrace monitoring data.
- The ID of the AWS account that hosts the ActiveGate (the account that hosts your Dynatrace components, which in this case is the one hosting the Environment ActiveGate).
- The Amazon Web Services monitored account ID (the account that you want to monitor).
- The name of the role with which your Environment ActiveGate was started.
- The External ID, which you can get as follows.
- Go to Settings > Cloud and virtualization > AWS.
- Select Connect new instance.
- Under Authentication method, select Role-based authentication.
- Under Token, select Copy to copy the token (the External ID) to your clipboard.
- Download the YAML file with CloudFormation template.
- Create the stack in your Amazon Console:
- In your Amazon Console, go to CloudFormation.
- Go to Stacks and create a new stack with new resources.
- Select Template is ready, upload the template you created above, and then select Next.
- In Parameters, for Monitored Account ID, enter the ID of the account Dynatrace will monitor. Optionally, adapt other parameters as needed.
- Enter a name for your stack, and then select Next twice.
- Review your configuration, select I acknowledge that AWS CloudFormation might create IAM resources with custom names, and select Submit.
You can also create a stack via CLI using the command below:
aws cloudformation create-stack \--capabilities CAPABILITY_NAMED_IAM \--stack-name <stack_name> \--template-body <file:///home/user/template_file.yaml> \--parameters ParameterKey=ActiveGateRoleName,ParameterValue=<role_name> ParameterKey=AssumePolicyName,ParameterValue=<policy_name> ParameterKey=MonitoringRoleName,ParameterValue=<monitoring_role_name> ParameterKey=MonitoredAccountID,ParameterValue=<monitored_account_id>
- Go to the Amazon EC2 console, right-click an instance hosting your Environment ActiveGate, and select Security > Modify IAM role.
- Select the role you created and select Update IAM role.
After the Dynatrace_ActiveGate_role is created on the account hosting the ActiveGate, create a role for the account to be monitored.
- Download a YAML file with CloudFormation template from github role_based_access_AG_account_template.yml.
- Create the stack in your Amazon Console:
- In your Amazon Console, go to CloudFormation.
- Go to Stacks and create a new stack with new resources.
- Select Template is ready, upload the template you created above, and select Next.
- In Parameters, enter External ID, ActiveGateRoleName and ActiveGateAccountID from the stack you created. Optionally, adapt other parameters if needed.
- Enter a name for your stack, and then select Next twice.
- Review your configuration, enable I acknowledge that AWS CloudFormation might create IAM resources with custom names, and select Submit.
You can also create a stack via CLI using the command below:
aws cloudformation create-stack \--capabilities CAPABILITY_NAMED_IAM \--stack-name <stack_name> \--template-body <file:///home/user/template_file.yaml> \--parameters ParameterKey=ExternalID,ParameterValue=<external_id> ParameterKey=ActiveGateRoleName,ParameterValue=<activegate_role_name> ParameterKey=ActiveGateAccountID,ParameterValue=<activegate_account_id>
Starting with ActiveGate version 1.217, AWS monitoring is enabled by default. For configuration details, see Customize ActiveGate properties. The following configuration settings refer to earlier ActiveGate versions.
-
Edit the
custom.propertiesfile of your Environment ActiveGate. -
Make the following property settings:
[aws_monitoring]use_aws_proxy_role = falseaws_monitoring_enabled = trueIf the ActiveGate is dedicated to AWS monitoring, you also need to set the MSGrouter property as follows:
[collector]MSGrouter = false -
Save the file and restart the ActiveGate main service.
Only for AWS GovCloud and China partitions is key-based authentication allowed.
In this scenario you have to create an AWS monitoring policy and generate a key pair with that policy.
AWS Identity and Access Management (IAM) permission boundaries may deny AWS actions required by Dynatrace. If you use IAM permission boundary on your AWS account, make sure that actions from policy are allowed in all AWS regions within permission boundary.
To create the AWS monitoring policy
- In your Amazon Console, go to Identity and Access Management.
- Go to Policies and select Create policy.
- Select the JSON tab and paste the predefined policy from the box below.
{"Version": "2012-10-17","Statement": [{"Sid": "VisualEditor0","Effect": "Allow","Action": ["acm-pca:ListCertificateAuthorities","apigateway:GET","apprunner:ListServices","appstream:DescribeFleets","appsync:ListGraphqlApis","athena:ListWorkGroups","autoscaling:DescribeAutoScalingGroups","cloudformation:ListStackResources","cloudfront:ListDistributions","cloudhsm:DescribeClusters","cloudsearch:DescribeDomains","cloudwatch:GetMetricData","cloudwatch:GetMetricStatistics","cloudwatch:ListMetrics","codebuild:ListProjects","datasync:ListTasks","dax:DescribeClusters","directconnect:DescribeConnections","dms:DescribeReplicationInstances","dynamodb:ListTables","dynamodb:ListTagsOfResource","ec2:DescribeAvailabilityZones","ec2:DescribeInstances","ec2:DescribeNatGateways","ec2:DescribeSpotFleetRequests","ec2:DescribeTransitGateways","ec2:DescribeVolumes","ec2:DescribeVpnConnections","ecs:ListClusters","eks:ListClusters","elasticache:DescribeCacheClusters","elasticbeanstalk:DescribeEnvironmentResources","elasticbeanstalk:DescribeEnvironments","elasticfilesystem:DescribeFileSystems","elasticloadbalancing:DescribeInstanceHealth","elasticloadbalancing:DescribeListeners","elasticloadbalancing:DescribeLoadBalancers","elasticloadbalancing:DescribeRules","elasticloadbalancing:DescribeTags","elasticloadbalancing:DescribeTargetHealth","elasticmapreduce:ListClusters","elastictranscoder:ListPipelines","es:ListDomainNames","events:ListEventBuses","firehose:ListDeliveryStreams","fsx:DescribeFileSystems","gamelift:ListFleets","glue:GetJobs","inspector:ListAssessmentTemplates","kafka:ListClusters","kinesis:ListStreams","kinesisanalytics:ListApplications","kinesisvideo:ListStreams","lambda:ListFunctions","lambda:ListTags","lex:GetBots","logs:DescribeLogGroups","mediaconnect:ListFlows","mediaconvert:DescribeEndpoints","mediapackage-vod:ListPackagingConfigurations","mediapackage:ListChannels","mediatailor:ListPlaybackConfigurations","opsworks:DescribeStacks","qldb:ListLedgers","rds:DescribeDBClusters","rds:DescribeDBInstances","rds:DescribeEvents","rds:ListTagsForResource","redshift:DescribeClusters","robomaker:ListSimulationJobs","route53:ListHostedZones","route53resolver:ListResolverEndpoints","s3:ListAllMyBuckets","sagemaker:ListEndpoints","sns:ListTopics","sqs:ListQueues","storagegateway:ListGateways","sts:GetCallerIdentity","swf:ListDomains","tag:GetResources","tag:GetTagKeys","transfer:ListServers","workmail:ListOrganizations","workspaces:DescribeWorkspaces"],"Resource": "*"}]}
- Give the policy a name.
- Select Create policy.
You'll need to generate an Access key and a Secret access key that Dynatrace can use to get metrics from Amazon Web Services.
- In your Amazon Console, go to Users and select Add Users.
- Enter the User name.
- In the next screen, choose Attach policies directly and attach the policy that you created before.
- Review the user details and select Create user.
- From the list of users, select your newly created user name and go to Security credentials, then select Create access key.
- On Access key best practices & alternatives, select Third-party service, then select Next.
- On Retrieve access keys, store the Access Key ID name (AKID) and Secret access key values.
- You can either download the user credentials or copy the credentials displayed online (select Show).
Terraform templates are an alternative way of creating and configuring AWS roles. For detailed instructions on how to create AWS roles with Terraform, see Configuring AWS role-based access with Terraform
Create monitoring configuration
You can create, activate, and manage multiple monitoring connections. Each connection is defined by the credentials and/or access tokens required for Dynatrace to be able to pull in the data.
Allowing for multiple connections and configurations makes it possible to monitor even extremely complex environments. With such an approach, you don't need to configure everything at once. Instead, you can gradually add monitoring configurations to your existing setup. Such an architecture also makes it easy to react to the dynamic changes of the monitored environment, without needing to reconfigure the unaffected elements.
Add a new AWS connection
If you've followed all the prior steps, you're ready to configure Amazon Web Services monitoring.
To add a new AWS connection
-
Go to Settings > Cloud and virtualization > AWS. The page lists AWS connections already configured.
If you haven't provided an ActiveGate required for AWS monitoring (check Prerequisites for details), the respective information will be provided on the screen and you will not be able to continue with the configuration process.
You can go back to changing the already configured connections at any later point in time.
- Go to Settings > Cloud and virtualization > AWS. The page lists existing connections.
- Edit connections as needed.
- To edit an existing connection or the monitored services within, select Edit
in that row. - To delete an existing connection, select Delete
in that row.
- To edit an existing connection or the monitored services within, select Edit
-
Select Connect new instance and complete the following fields.
-
Enabled toggle—make sure it's selected if you want to monitor this configuration.
-
Connection name—enter a descriptive name for the connection.
-
Authentication method—select
Role-based authentication. -
IAM role…—enter the name of the role you created in Amazon for Dynatrace (either
Dynatrace_monitoring_roleor a customized role name, if you created one). Remember to always use the role that contains all required permissions. -
Your Amazon account ID—enter your Amazon account ID (the account you want Dynatrace to pull metrics from).
-
-
Select Connect to verify and save the connection.
If your AWS account is on a different partition than the default AWS partition, you can use the AWS partition list to select your partition.
You can limit the data acquired from the CloudWatch by defining a tag-based filter of specific resources. See Limit API calls to AWS using tags for more details on tag-based filtering.
AWS cloud services monitored by default
After Dynatrace connects to your AWS environment, it immediately starts monitoring selected AWS services. Classic (formerly "built-in") AWS metrics lists the metrics of AWS cloud services monitored by default.
Monitor other AWS services
In addition to AWS services, it's also possible to monitor all other AWS cloud services. AWS cloud services are enabled for monitoring per AWS connection.
To add a service to monitoring:
- Go to Settings > Cloud and virtualization > AWS.
- On the AWS overview page, find the connection that you want to change and select Edit in that row.
- Under Services, select Manage services.
- Select Add service.
- Select the service from the list and then select Add service.
- Select Save changes to save your configuration.
You can add multiple cloud services by repeating the steps above.
After you add a service, Dynatrace automatically starts collecting a set of metrics for this particular service.
Recommended metrics:
- Enabled by default
- Can not be disabled
- Can come with recommended dimensions (enabled by default, can't be disabled)
- Can come with optional dimensions (disabled by default, can be enabled)
Apart from the recommended metrics, most services have the possibility of enabling optional metrics that can be added and configured manually.
To see the complete list of AWS cloud services and learn about the metrics collected for each of them, see All AWS cloud services.
Alternatively, you can check the list of supported AWS Services within in-product Dynatrace Hub (search for AWS) or in the web version of Dynatrace Hub.
- Go to Settings > Cloud and virtualization > AWS.
- On the AWS overview page, find the connection that you want to change and select the edit icon next to its name.
- Go to Services and select Manage services.
- To add a metric select the service for which you want to add metrics and select Add new metric.
- From the menu select Add metric for the metric you want to monitor.
- Select Edit to configure the metric.
- Select Apply to save your configuration.
After you select the cloud services and save your changes, monitoring of the newly added services starts automatically.
What's next?
Within minutes, you'll see the data on your dashboards.
To see the core measurements per each of the AWS connections
- Go to AWS.
- Select the connection for which you want to see an overview of the AWS infrastructure.
You can also build your own dashboard from the metrics collected for your AWS instances. For details on building dashboards, see Dashboards Classic.
Dynatrace OneAgent offers unparalleled depth of insight into hosts, containers, and code. To learn more, see Set up Dynatrace on Amazon Web Services.
After you set up AWS monitoring, you can:
- Set up metric events for alerting. This enables you to create, enable, disable and configure recommended alerting rules.
- Limit API calls to AWS using tags. By default, Dynatrace monitors all Amazon Web Services that have been specified in your permission policy. Optionally, you can use tagging to limit the AWS resources that are monitored by Dynatrace.
This method of monitoring does not require an ActiveGate. Dynatrace integration with Amazon CloudWatch Metric Streams provides a simple and safe way to ingest AWS metrics. Amazon CloudWatch Metric Streams allows all metrics issued in a given AWS region to be streamed through Kinesis Firehose to the Dynatrace API. For details, see Amazon CloudWatch Metric Streams.
It is also possible to trace AWS Lambda .NET Core functions with OpenTelemetry .NET.