Set up Dynatrace Managed for AWS monitoring

You can integrate Dynatrace with Amazon Web Services (AWS) for intelligent monitoring of services running in the Amazon Cloud. AWS integration helps you stay on top of the dynamics of your data center in the cloud.

Dynatrace can be deployed with or without Environment ActiveGate. While using the role-based access method, make sure that you meet one of the following deployment requirements:

  • For deployments with Environment ActiveGate, the Environment ActiveGate must be hosted in AWS.
  • For deployments without Environment ActiveGate, a Dynatrace Managed Server must be hosted in AWS.

Overview

Follow these basic steps to integrate Dynatrace Managed with Amazon Web Services (AWS):

Cloud-service monitoring consumption

All cloud services consume Davis data units (DDUs). The amount of DDU consumption per service instance depends on the number of monitored metrics and their dimensions (each metric dimension results in the ingestion of 1 data point; 1 data point consumes 0.001 DDUs).

AWS costs

Dynatrace makes Amazon API requests every five minutes. In addition to CloudWatch API calls, Dynatrace makes API calls to the monitored AWS services to learn about their instances, tags, etc. The list of called services and actions is available below in the Create the monitoring policy section.

Here's a rough estimate of AWS monitoring costs:

AWS service
Number of metrics
Daily cost per instance (USD)
Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2)
7
$0.02016
Elastic Block Store (EBS)
8
$0.02304
Elastic Load Balancer (ELB)
11
$0.03168
Relational Database Service (RDS)
11
$0.03168
DynamoDB
15
$0.06912
Lambda
4
$0.01152
Amazon charges

Amazon will charge about $0.01 per 1,000 metrics requested from the CloudWatch API and include the cost in the bill for the AWS account you use with Dynatrace.

AWS monitoring policy

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 and, for each cloud service, a list of optional permissions specific to that service.

Permissions required for AWS monitoring integration:
  • "cloudwatch:GetMetricData"
  • "cloudwatch:GetMetricStatistics"
  • "cloudwatch:ListMetrics"
  • "sts:GetCallerIdentity"
  • "tag:GetResources"
  • "tag:GetTagKeys"
  • "ec2:DescribeAvailabilityZones"
Name
Permissions
All monitored Amazon services required
cloudwatch:GetMetricData,
cloudwatch:GetMetricStatistics,
cloudwatch:ListMetrics,
sts:GetCallerIdentity,
tag:GetResources,
tag:GetTagKeys,
ec2:DescribeAvailabilityZones
AWS Certificate Manager Private Certificate Authority
acm-pca:ListCertificateAuthorities
Amazon MQ
Amazon API Gateway
apigateway:GET
AWS App Runner
apprunner:ListServices
Amazon AppStream
appstream:DescribeFleets
AWS AppSync
appsync:ListGraphqlApis
Amazon Athena
athena:ListWorkGroups
Amazon Aurora
rds:DescribeDBClusters
Amazon EC2 Auto Scaling
autoscaling:DescribeAutoScalingGroups
Amazon EC2 Auto Scaling (built-in)
autoscaling:DescribeAutoScalingGroups
AWS Billing
Amazon Keyspaces
AWS Chatbot
Amazon CloudFront
cloudfront:ListDistributions
AWS CloudHSM
cloudhsm:DescribeClusters
Amazon CloudSearch
cloudsearch:DescribeDomains
AWS CodeBuild
codebuild:ListProjects
Amazon Cognito
Amazon Connect
Amazon Elastic Kubernetes Service (EKS)
eks:ListClusters
AWS DataSync
datasync:ListTasks
Amazon DynamoDB Accelerator (DAX)
dax:DescribeClusters
AWS Database Migration Service (AWS DMS)
dms:DescribeReplicationInstances
Amazon DocumentDB
rds:DescribeDBClusters
AWS Direct Connect
directconnect:DescribeConnections
Amazon DynamoDB
dynamodb:ListTables
Amazon DynamoDB (built-in)
dynamodb:ListTables,
dynamodb:ListTagsOfResource
Amazon EBS
ec2:DescribeVolumes
Amazon EBS (built-in)
ec2:DescribeVolumes
Amazon EC2 API
Amazon EC2 (built-in)
ec2:DescribeInstances
Amazon EC2 Spot Fleet
ec2:DescribeSpotFleetRequests
Amazon Elastic Container Service (ECS)
ecs:ListClusters
Amazon ECS Container Insights
ecs:ListClusters
Amazon ElastiCache (EC)
elasticache:DescribeCacheClusters
AWS Elastic Beanstalk
elasticbeanstalk:DescribeEnvironments
Amazon Elastic File System (EFS)
elasticfilesystem:DescribeFileSystems
Amazon Elastic Inference
Amazon Elastic Map Reduce (EMR)
elasticmapreduce:ListClusters
Amazon Elasticsearch Service (ES)
es:ListDomainNames
Amazon Elastic Transcoder
elastictranscoder:ListPipelines
Amazon Elastic Load Balancer (ELB) (built-in)
elasticloadbalancing:DescribeInstanceHealth,
elasticloadbalancing:DescribeListeners,
elasticloadbalancing:DescribeLoadBalancers,
elasticloadbalancing:DescribeRules,
elasticloadbalancing:DescribeTags,
elasticloadbalancing:DescribeTargetHealth
Amazon EventBridge
events:ListEventBuses
Amazon FSx
fsx:DescribeFileSystems
Amazon GameLift
gamelift:ListFleets
AWS Glue
glue:GetJobs
Amazon Inspector
inspector:ListAssessmentTemplates
AWS Internet of Things (IoT)
AWS IoT Analytics
Amazon Managed Streaming for Kafka
kafka:ListClusters
Amazon Kinesis Data Analytics
kinesisanalytics:ListApplications
Amazon Data Firehose
firehose:ListDeliveryStreams
Amazon Kinesis Data Streams
kinesis:ListStreams
Amazon Kinesis Video Streams
kinesisvideo:ListStreams
AWS Lambda
lambda:ListFunctions
AWS Lambda (built-in)
lambda:ListFunctions,
lambda:ListTags
Amazon Lex
lex:GetBots
Amazon Application and Network Load Balancer (built-in)
elasticloadbalancing:DescribeInstanceHealth,
elasticloadbalancing:DescribeListeners,
elasticloadbalancing:DescribeLoadBalancers,
elasticloadbalancing:DescribeRules,
elasticloadbalancing:DescribeTags,
elasticloadbalancing:DescribeTargetHealth
Amazon CloudWatch Logs
logs:DescribeLogGroups
AWS Elemental MediaConnect
mediaconnect:ListFlows
AWS Elemental MediaConvert
mediaconvert:DescribeEndpoints

Access method

To get the information required for comprehensive AWS cloud-computing monitoring, Dynatrace needs to identify all the virtualized infrastructure components in your AWS environment and collect performance metrics related to those components. We use this information to understand the context of your applications, services, and hosts. For this to happen, you need to authorize Dynatrace to access your Amazon metrics.

Make sure that your Environment ActiveGate or Managed Cluster has a working connection to AWS. Configure your proxy for Managed or ActiveGate, or allow access to *.amazonaws.com in your firewall settings.

Role-based access with Environment ActiveGate or Dynatrace Managed Server

The instructions below apply 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 or Dynatrace Managed Server hosted in your AWS infrastructure, on an Amazon EC2 host.
    • Its attached policy, which defines 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, which defines the Dynatrace authentication permissions to your AWS environment.

To monitor multiple accounts, add all resources to the Resource array in the template in Step 1 and repeat Step 2 to create a stack for each monitored account.

Prerequisites for role-based access, with Environment ActiveGate or Dynatrace Managed Server

  • Dynatrace Managed Server 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 (for example, the account that hosts your Dynatrace components, which in this case is the one hosting Environment ActiveGate or Dynatrace Managed Server).

  • The Amazon Web Services monitored account ID (the account you want to monitor).

  • The name of the role with which your Environment ActiveGate or Dynatrace Managed Server was started.

  • The External ID.

    1. Go to Settings.
    2. Select Cloud and virtualization > AWS > Connect new instance.
    3. Under Authentication method, select Role-based authentication.
    4. Under Your Amazon account ID, select Copy to copy the token (the External ID).

To enable access to your Amazon account using role-based access, follow the steps below.

Step 1 Create a role for ActiveGate on the account that hosts ActiveGate

  1. Create a YAML file and paste the contents of github role_based_access_AG_account_template.yml.
For multiple monitored accounts

For each account you want to monitor, in the Resource section of the template above, add a new item to the !Sub array in the following format: 'arn:aws:iam::<new_monitored_account_id>:role/<new_monitoring_role_name>'.

Be sure to replace the placeholders (<new_monitored_account_id> and <new_monitoring_role_name>) with your own values.

  1. Create the stack in your Amazon Console or using the CLI.
  1. In your Amazon Console, go to CloudFormation.
  2. Go to Stacks and create a new stack with new resources.
  3. Select Template is ready, upload the template you created above, and select Next.
  4. In Parameters, for MonitoredAccountID, enter the ID of the account Dynatrace will monitor. Optionally, adapt other parameters as needed.
  5. Enter a name for your stack, and then select Next twice.
  6. Review your configuration, select I acknowledge that AWS CloudFormation might create IAM resources with custom names, and select Create stack.

Run the command below, making sure to replace the parameter values with your actual values.

You need to remove the angle brackets (< and >).

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>
  1. Go to the Amazon EC2 console, right-click an instance hosting your Environment ActiveGate, and select Security > Modify IAM role.

  2. Select the role you created at step 1 (for example, Dynatrace_ActiveGate_role), and select Apply.

Step 2 Create a monitoring role for Dynatrace on your monitored account

After the Dynatrace_ActiveGate_role is created on the account hosting the ActiveGate, create a role for the account to be monitored.

  1. Create a YAML file and paste the content from the github role_based_access_monitored_account_template.yml.

  2. Create the stack in your Amazon Console or using the CLI.

    1. In your Amazon Console, go to CloudFormation.

    2. Go to Stacks and create a new stack with new resources.

    3. Select Template is ready, upload the template you created above, and select Next.

    4. In Parameters, enter:

    • The External ID. For details, see Prerequisites
    • The ActiveGateRoleName and the ActiveGateAccountID from the stack created in Step 1.

    Optionally, adapt other parameters as needed.

    1. Enter a name for your stack, and then select Next twice.
    2. Review your configuration, enable I acknowledge that AWS CloudFormation might create IAM resources with custom names, and select Create stack.

    Run the command below, making sure to replace the parameter values with your actual values.

    You need to remove the angle brackets (< and >).

    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>
    ParameterKey=RoleName,ParameterValue=<role_name> ParameterKey=PolicyName,ParameterValue=<policy_name>

Step 3 Modify ActiveGate configuration

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.

  1. Edit the custom.properties configuration file of the ActiveGate that you want to use for AWS monitoring.

  2. Set the following properties as below:

    [aws_monitoring]
    use_aws_proxy_role = false
    aws_monitoring_enabled = true

    ActiveGate version 1.183 or earlier

    [vertical.topology]
    use_aws_proxy_role = false
    [aws_monitoring]
    aws_monitoring_enabled = true
    Multiple ActiveGates

    It's enough to use only one ActiveGate dedicated for AWS monitoring. However, some deployment scenarios (for example, for redundancy purposes) might require multiple ActiveGates in your deployment.

    Make sure that only properly configured ActiveGates have aws_monitoring_enabled set to true.

    • They need network access to AWS endpoints.
    • For role-based monitoring, they must have proper roles attached.

    Keep in mind that Dynatrace cluster nodes contain embedded ActiveGates. Make sure to set the aws_monitoring_enabled property to false on these ActiveGates if they're not configured fully for AWS monitoring.

    If the ActiveGate is dedicated to AWS monitoring, you must also set the MSGrouter property to false:

    [collector]
    MSGrouter = false

    Remove aws_proxy_account and aws_proxy_role properties.

  3. Save the file and restart the ActiveGate main service.

Key-based authentication is only allowed for AWS GovCloud and China partitions.

In this scenario, you have to create an AWS monitoring policy and generate a key pair with that policy.

AWS IAM permissions boundaries may prohibit AWS actions required by Dynatrace. If you use an IAM permissions boundary on your AWS account, make sure that the actions from that policy are allowed in all AWS regions within that permissions boundary.

To create the AWS monitoring policy

  1. In your Amazon Console, go to Identity and Access Management.
  2. Go to Policies and select Create policy.
  3. 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": "*"
    }
    ]
    }
  4. Give the policy a name.
  5. Select Create policy.

Dynatrace can use access keys to make secure REST or Query protocol requests to the AWS service API. You'll need to generate an Access key ID and a Secret access key that Dynatrace can use to get metrics from Amazon Web Services.

  1. In your Amazon Console, go to Users and select Add Users.
  2. Enter the User name.
  3. In the next screen, choose Attach policies directly and attach the policy that you created before.
  4. Review the user details and select Create user.
  5. From the list of users, select your newly created user name and go to Security credentials, then select Create access key.
  6. In the Access key best practices & alternatives screen, select Third-party service, then select Next.
  7. You will be transferred to the Retrieve access keys screen, where both your Access key and a Secret access key are present.
  8. Store the Access Key ID name (AKID) and Secret access key values.
  9. You can either download the user credentials or copy the credentials displayed online (select Show).

Connect your Amazon account

Once you've granted AWS access to Dynatrace, it's time to connect Dynatrace to your Amazon AWS account.

  1. In Dynatrace, go to Settings > Cloud and virtualization > AWS and select Connect new instance.

  2. Select the Role-based authentication method.

    • Create a name for this connection. If you leave this field empty, the name Role will be used on Dynatrace pages to define this connection.
    • In the Role field, type the name of the role you created in Amazon for Dynatrace (for example, Dynatrace_monitoring_role).
    • Type your Account ID (the account you want us to pull metrics from).
    • Select Connect to verify and save the connection.
  3. Once the connection is successfully verified and saved, your AWS account will be listed in the Cloud and virtualization settings page.
    You should soon begin to see AWS cloud monitoring data.

Select your AWS partition

If your AWS account is on a different partition than the default aws partition, you can select it and Dynatrace will connect to it instead.

To change your AWS partition

  1. Go to Settings > Cloud and virtualization > AWS.
  2. Find the instance where you want to change the partition and select Edit to edit the instance.
  3. In the AWS partition list, select your partition.
  4. Select Save.

Adjust monitoring to your needs

You can alter the scope and content of your monitoring depending on your preferences by using tags and listing services needed.

Limit monitored resources using tags

We recommend that you limit the scope of your AWS monitoring and reduce the number API calls to Amazon. You can use tagging to limit the AWS resources (AWS service instances) that are monitored by Dynatrace.

Set up metric events for alerting

To configure metric events for alerting, follow this guide.

Choose Cloud services to be monitored

Once your credentials are saved, you can decide which services will be monitored. To select your preferred services

  1. Go to Settings > Cloud and virtualization > AWS.
  2. Find the instance where you want to perform your monitoring and select Edit to edit the instance.
  3. In the Services section, select Manage services.
  4. The following services are added by default: Amazon EC2, AWS Lambda, Amazon RDS, Amazon DynamoDB, Amazon ALB, Amazon ELB, Amazon S3, and Amazon EBS. You can extend this list by choosing services from the dropdown menu. The full list of services is also available at All AWS cloud services.
  5. Select Add service
  6. Select the service from the list and then select Add service.
  7. Select Save changes to save your configuration.