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):

Configure the access method
Select your AWS partition
Adjust monitoring to your needs

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)

$0.02016

Elastic Block Store (EBS)

$0.02304

Elastic Load Balancer (ELB)

$0.03168

Relational Database Service (RDS)

$0.03168

DynamoDB

$0.06912

Lambda

$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)

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.

Create a role for ActiveGate on the account that hosts ActiveGate

Create a monitoring role for Dynatrace on your monitored account

Modify ActiveGate configuration

Create a role for ActiveGate on the account that hosts ActiveGate

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.

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

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, for MonitoredAccountID, 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 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>

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 at step 1 (for example, Dynatrace_ActiveGate_role), and select Apply.

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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.
In the Access key best practices & alternatives screen, select Third-party service, then select Next.
You will be transferred to the Retrieve access keys screen, where both your Access key and a Secret access key are present.
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).

Connect your Amazon account

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

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

Go to Settings > Cloud and virtualization > AWS.
Find the instance where you want to change the partition and select to edit the instance.
In the AWS partition list, select your partition.
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

Go to Settings > Cloud and virtualization > AWS.
Find the instance where you want to perform your monitoring and select to edit the instance.
In the Services section, select Manage services.
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.
Select Add service
Select the service from the list and then select Add service.
Select Save changes to save your configuration.