Use the previous CloudWatch agent to get started with CloudWatch Logs - Amazon CloudWatch Logs
CloudWatch Logs agent prerequisites
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Use the previous CloudWatch agent to get started with CloudWatch Logs

Important

CloudWatch includes a unified CloudWatch agent that can collect both logs and metrics from EC2 instances and on-premises servers. The older logs-only agent is deprecated and is no longer supported.

For information about migrating from the older logs-only agent to the unified agent, see Create the CloudWatch agent configuration file with the wizard.

The rest of this section explains the use of the older CloudWatch Logs agent for customers who are still using it.

Using the CloudWatch Logs agent, you can publish log data from Amazon EC2 instances running Linux or Windows Server, and logged events from Amazon CloudTrail. We recommend instead using the CloudWatch unified agent to publish your log data. For more information about the new agent, see Collect Metrics and Logs from Amazon EC2 Instances and On-Premises Servers with the CloudWatch Agent in the Amazon CloudWatch User Guide.

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CloudWatch Logs agent prerequisites

The CloudWatch Logs agent requires Python version 2.7, 3.0, or 3.3, and any of the following versions of Linux:

  • Amazon Linux version 2014.03.02 or later. Amazon Linux 2 is not supported

  • Ubuntu Server version 12.04, 14.04, or 16.04

  • CentOS version 6, 6.3, 6.4, 6.5, or 7.0

  • Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) version 6.5 or 7.0

  • Debian 8.0