Exporting application metrics to Amazon CloudWatch - Amazon Elastic Container Service
ConsiderationsRequired IAM permissions for Amazon Distro for OpenTelemetry integration with Amazon CloudWatchSpecifying the Amazon Distro for OpenTelemetry sidecar in your task definition
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Exporting application metrics to Amazon CloudWatch

Amazon ECS on Fargate supports exporting your custom application metrics to Amazon CloudWatch as custom metrics. This is done by adding the Amazon Distro for OpenTelemetry sidecar container to your task definition. The new Amazon ECS console experience simplifies this process by adding the Use metric collection option when creating a new task definition. For more information, see Creating a task definition using the console.

The application metrics are exported to CloudWatch Logs with log group name /aws/ecs/application/metrics and the metrics can be viewed in the ECS/AWSOTel/Application namespace. Your application must be instrumented with the OpenTelemetry SDK. For more information, see Introduction to Amazon Distro for OpenTelemetry in the Amazon Distro for OpenTelemetry documentation.

Considerations

The following should be considered when using the Amazon ECS on Fargate integration with Amazon Distro for OpenTelemetry to send application metrics to Amazon CloudWatch.

  • This integration only sends your custom application metrics to CloudWatch. If you want task-level metrics, you can turn on Container Insights in the Amazon ECS cluster configuration. For more information, see Amazon ECS CloudWatch Container Insights.

  • The Amazon Distro for OpenTelemetry integration is supported for Amazon ECS workloads hosted on Fargate and Amazon ECS workloads hosted on Amazon EC2 instances. External instances aren't currently supported.

  • CloudWatch supports a maximum of 30 dimensions per metric. By default, Amazon ECS defaults to including the TaskARN, ClusterARN, LaunchType, TaskDefinitionFamily, and TaskDefinitionRevision dimensions to the metrics. The remaining 25 dimensions can be defined by your application. If more than 30 dimensions are configured, CloudWatch can't display them. When this occurs, the application metrics will appear in the ECS/AWSOTel/Application CloudWatch metric namespace but without any dimensions. You can instrument your application to add additional dimensions. For more information, see Using CloudWatch metrics with Amazon Distro for OpenTelemetry in the Amazon Distro for OpenTelemetry documentation.

Required IAM permissions for Amazon Distro for OpenTelemetry integration with Amazon CloudWatch

The Amazon ECS integration with Amazon Distro for OpenTelemetry requires that you create a task IAM role and specify the role in your task definition. We recommend that the Amazon Distro for OpenTelemetry sidecar also be configured to route container logs to CloudWatch Logs which requires a task execution IAM role be created and specified in your task definition as well. The new Amazon ECS console experience takes care of the task execution IAM role on your behalf, but the task IAM role must be created manually and added to your task definition. For more information about the task execution IAM role, see Amazon ECS task execution IAM role.

Important

If you're also collecting application trace data using the Amazon Distro for OpenTelemetry integration, ensure your task IAM role also contains the permissions necessary for that integration. For more information, see Collecting application trace data.

To create a task IAM role for Amazon Distro for OpenTelemetry integration with CloudWatch

  1. Open the IAM console at https://console.amazonaws.cn/iam/.

  2. In the navigation pane, choose Policies, Create policy.

  3. On the Create policy page, switch to the JSON tab, copy and paste the following IAM policy JSON into the field, then choose Next: Tags.

    {
    "Version": "2012-10-17",
    "Statement": [
        {
            "Effect": "Allow",
            "Action": [
                "logs:PutLogEvents",
                "logs:CreateLogGroup",
                "logs:CreateLogStream",
                "logs:DescribeLogStreams",
                "logs:DescribeLogGroups",
                "cloudwatch:PutMetricData"
            ],
            "Resource": "*"
        }
    ]
}
    Note

    If your application requires any additional permissions, you should add them to this policy. Each task definition may only specify one task IAM role. For example, if you are using a custom configuration file stored in Systems Manager, you should add the ssm:GetParameters permission to this IAM policy.

  4. (Optional) Add one or more tags to the policy, then choose Next: Review.

  5. For Name, specify AWSDistroOpenTelemetryPolicyForCloudWatch.

  6. For Description, specify an optional description, then choose Create policy.

  7. In the navigation pane, choose Roles, Create role.

  8. In the Select type of trusted entity section, choose Amazon service, Elastic Container Service.

  9. For Select your use case, choose Elastic Container Service Task, then choose Next: Permissions.

  10. In the Attach permissions policy section, search for AWSDistroOpenTelemetryPolicyForCloudWatch, select the policy, and then choose Next: Tags.

  11. For Add tags (optional), specify any custom tags to associate with the policy and then choose Next: Review.

  12. For Role name, specify AmazonECS_OpenTelemetryCloudWatchRole and choose Create role.

Specifying the Amazon Distro for OpenTelemetry sidecar in your task definition

The new Amazon ECS console experience simplifies the experience of creating the Amazon Distro for OpenTelemetry sidecar container by using the Use metric collection option. For more information, see Creating a task definition using the console.

If you're not using the Amazon ECS console, you can add the Amazon Distro for OpenTelemetry sidecar container to your task definition manually. The following task definition example shows the container definition for adding the Amazon Distro for OpenTelemetry sidecar for Amazon CloudWatch integration.

{
	"family": "otel-using-cloudwatch",
	"taskRoleArn": "arn:aws:iam::111122223333:role/AmazonECS_OpenTelemetryCloudWatchRole",
	"executionRoleArn": "arn:aws:iam::111122223333:role/ecsTaskExecutionRole",
	"containerDefinitions": [{
			"name": "aws-otel-emitter",
			"image": "application-image",
			"logConfiguration": {
				"logDriver": "awslogs",
				"options": {
					"awslogs-create-group": "true",
					"awslogs-group": "/ecs/aws-otel-emitter",
					"awslogs-region": "us-east-1",
					"awslogs-stream-prefix": "ecs"
				}
			},
			"dependsOn": [{
				"containerName": "aws-otel-collector",
				"condition": "START"
			}]
		},
		{
			"name": "aws-otel-collector",
			"image": "public.ecr.aws/aws-observability/aws-otel-collector:v0.29.0",
			"essential": true,
			"command": [
				"--config=/etc/ecs/ecs-cloudwatch.yaml"
			],
			"logConfiguration": {
				"logDriver": "awslogs",
				"options": {
					"awslogs-create-group": "True",
					"awslogs-group": "/ecs/ecs-aws-otel-sidecar-collector",
					"awslogs-region": "us-east-1",
					"awslogs-stream-prefix": "ecs"
				}
			}
		}
	],
	"networkMode": "awsvpc",
	"requiresCompatibilities": [
		"FARGATE"
	],
	"cpu": "1024",
	"memory": "3072"
}