Amazon CloudWatch

Metrics

Install Integration

Create IAM Policy

In the top left corner of your aws console you will notice a services drop down arrow. Open it and from that menu choose IAM.

Next, in the left hand menu, select policies. Once you have reached the policies page you want to hit the Create Policy that appears towards the top of the page.

Creating a policy is essentially defining permissions that you can then assign to an identity (user, group or roles.)

On the create policy screen choose the json tab and enter the following:

{
  "Version": "2012-10-17",
  "Statement": [
    {
      "Sid": "Stmt1444715676000",
      "Effect": "Allow",
      "Action": [
        "cloudwatch:GetMetricStatistics",
        "cloudwatch:ListMetrics"
      ],
      "Resource": "*"
    },
    {
      "Sid": "Stmt1444716576170",
      "Effect": "Allow",
      "Action": [
        "ec2:DescribeInstances"
      ],
      "Resource": "*"
    }
  ]
}

At the bottom of the page select review policy and finally on the next page you need to give your policy a name, now hit create policy.

Create IAM User

You are now going to need to create a new user so that you can attach the policy you created in step one, this will outline the responsibilities of this user.

While on the IAM page, in the left hand menu choose users.

Now at the top of the page select Add User.

Enter a username and make sure to check Programmatic Access, continue onto the next page of creation.

In the next section you want to attach an exisiting policy. Highlight attach exisiting policies and search the policy list below for your newly created policy.

Continue onwards to the next step, you can choose to set any Tags here but they aren't necessary. Continue onto the User Review, check all settings are correct and select create user.

On the next screen you will be given your Access Key ID and Secret Access Key. You will need to make a note of these or alternatively download the .csv file provided.

Confirm EC2 Instance (Optional)

If you already have an EC2 Instance running you can skip this step.

The easiest way to for the new user to generate some data is to create an EC2 instance so that it can gather the metrics. Select the services drop down and look for EC2, it should come under the heading Compute. On the left hand menu select instances and choose to create a new instance and follow the steps provided.

Once you've created your instance you can move onto the next step.

Configure Logstash for Amazon CloudWatch

To start sending logs and metrics from AWS to your Stack you need to configure an AWS Input on your Logit.io Stack.

Check Logit.io for your metrics

Data should now have been sent to your Stack.

If you don't see take a look at How to diagnose no data in Stack below for how to diagnose common issues.