Log Amazon ECS API calls using Amazon CloudTrail - Amazon Elastic Container Service
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Log Amazon ECS API calls using Amazon CloudTrail

Amazon Elastic Container Service is integrated with Amazon CloudTrail, a service that provides a record of actions taken by a user, role, or an Amazon Web Services service. CloudTrail captures all API calls for Amazon ECS as events. The calls captured include calls from the Amazon ECS console and code calls to the Amazon ECS API operations. Using the information collected by CloudTrail, you can determine the request that was made to Amazon ECS, the IP address from which the request was made, when it was made, and additional details.

Every event or log entry contains information about who generated the request. The identity information helps you determine the following:

  • Whether the request was made with root user or user credentials.

  • Whether the request was made on behalf of an IAM Identity Center user.

  • Whether the request was made with temporary security credentials for a role or federated user.

  • Whether the request was made by another Amazon Web Services service.

CloudTrail is active in your Amazon Web Services account when you create the account and you automatically have access to the CloudTrail Event history. The CloudTrail Event history provides a viewable, searchable, downloadable, and immutable record of the past 90 days of recorded management events in an Amazon Web Services Region. For more information, see Working with CloudTrail Event history in the Amazon CloudTrail User Guide. There are no CloudTrail charges for viewing the Event history.

For an ongoing record of events in your Amazon Web Services account past 90 days, create a trail or a CloudTrail Lake event data store.

CloudTrail trails

A trail enables CloudTrail to deliver log files to an Amazon S3 bucket. All trails created using the Amazon Web Services Management Console are multi-Region. You can create a single-Region or a multi-Region trail by using the Amazon CLI. Creating a multi-Region trail is recommended because you capture activity in all Amazon Web Services Regions in your account. If you create a single-Region trail, you can view only the events logged in the trail's Amazon Web Services Region. For more information about trails, see Creating a trail for your Amazon Web Services account and Creating a trail for an organization in the Amazon CloudTrail User Guide.

You can deliver one copy of your ongoing management events to your Amazon S3 bucket at no charge from CloudTrail by creating a trail, however, there are Amazon S3 storage charges. For more information about CloudTrail pricing, see Amazon CloudTrail Pricing. For information about Amazon S3 pricing, see Amazon S3 Pricing.

CloudTrail Lake event data stores

CloudTrail Lake lets you run SQL-based queries on your events. CloudTrail Lake converts existing events in row-based JSON format to Apache ORC format. ORC is a columnar storage format that is optimized for fast retrieval of data. Events are aggregated into event data stores, which are immutable collections of events based on criteria that you select by applying advanced event selectors. The selectors that you apply to an event data store control which events persist and are available for you to query. For more information about CloudTrail Lake, see Working with Amazon CloudTrail Lake in the Amazon CloudTrail User Guide.

CloudTrail Lake event data stores and queries incur costs. When you create an event data store, you choose the pricing option you want to use for the event data store. The pricing option determines the cost for ingesting and storing events, and the default and maximum retention period for the event data store. For more information about CloudTrail pricing, see Amazon CloudTrail Pricing.

Amazon ECS management events in CloudTrail

Management events provide information about management operations that are performed on resources in your Amazon Web Services account. These are also known as control plane operations. By default, CloudTrail logs management events.

Amazon Elastic Container Service logs all Amazon ECS control plane operations as management events. For example, calls to the CreateService, RunTask and DeleteCluster sections generate entries in the CloudTrail log files. For a list of the Amazon Elastic Container Service control plane operations that Amazon ECS logs to CloudTrail, see the Amazon Elastic Container Service API Reference.

Amazon ECS event examples

An event represents a single request from any source and includes information about the requested API operation, the date and time of the operation, request parameters, and so on. CloudTrail log files aren't an ordered stack trace of the public API calls, so events don't appear in any specific order.

The following example shows a CloudTrail event that demonstrates the CreateService action.

Note

This example has been formatted for improved readability. In a CloudTrail log file, all entries and events are concatenated into a single line. In addition, this example has been limited to a single Amazon ECS entry. In a real CloudTrail log file, you see entries and events from multiple Amazon services.

{ "eventVersion": "1.04", "userIdentity": { "type": "AssumedRole", "principalId": "AIDACKCEVSQ6C2EXAMPLE:account_name", "arn": "arn:aws:sts::123456789012:user/Mary_Major", "accountId": "123456789012", "accessKeyId": "AKIAIOSFODNN7EXAMPLE", "sessionContext": { "attributes": { "mfaAuthenticated": "false", "creationDate": "2018-06-20T18:32:25Z" }, "sessionIssuer": { "type": "Role", "principalId": "AIDACKCEVSQ6C2EXAMPLE", "arn": "arn:aws:iam::123456789012:role/Admin", "accountId": "123456789012", "userName": "Mary_Major" } } }, "eventTime": "2018-06-20T19:04:36Z", "eventSource": "ecs.amazonaws.com", "eventName": "CreateCluster", "awsRegion": "us-east-1", "sourceIPAddress": "203.0.113.12", "userAgent": "console.amazonaws.com", "requestParameters": { "clusterName": "default" }, "responseElements": { "cluster": { "clusterArn": "arn:aws:ecs:us-east-1:123456789012:cluster/default", "pendingTasksCount": 0, "registeredContainerInstancesCount": 0, "status": "ACTIVE", "runningTasksCount": 0, "statistics": [], "clusterName": "default", "activeServicesCount": 0 } }, "requestID": "cb8c167e-EXAMPLE", "eventID": "e3c6f4ce-EXAMPLE", "eventType": "AwsApiCall", "recipientAccountId": "123456789012" }

For information about CloudTrail record contents, see CloudTrail record contents in the Amazon CloudTrail User Guide.