Publishing MySQL logs to Amazon CloudWatch Logs - Amazon Relational Database Service
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Publishing MySQL logs to Amazon CloudWatch Logs

You can configure your MySQL DB instance to publish log data to a log group in Amazon CloudWatch Logs. With CloudWatch Logs, you can perform real-time analysis of the log data, and use CloudWatch to create alarms and view metrics. You can use CloudWatch Logs to store your log records in highly durable storage.

Amazon RDS publishes each MySQL database log as a separate database stream in the log group. For example, if you configure the export function to include the slow query log, slow query data is stored in a slow query log stream in the /aws/rds/instance/my_instance/slowquery log group.

The error log is enabled by default. The following table summarizes the requirements for the other MySQL logs.

Log Requirement

Audit log

The DB instance must use a custom option group with the MARIADB_AUDIT_PLUGIN option.

General log

The DB instance must use a custom parameter group with the parameter setting general_log = 1 to enable the general log.

Slow query log

The DB instance must use a custom parameter group with the parameter setting slow_query_log = 1 to enable the slow query log.

Log output

The DB instance must use a custom parameter group with the parameter setting log_output = FILE to write logs to the file system and publish them to CloudWatch Logs.
To publish MySQL logs to CloudWatch Logs using the console

  1. Open the Amazon RDS console at https://console.amazonaws.cn/rds/.

  2. In the navigation pane, choose Databases, and then choose the DB instance that you want to modify.

  3. Choose Modify.

  4. In the Log exports section, choose the logs that you want to start publishing to CloudWatch Logs.

  5. Choose Continue, and then choose Modify DB Instance on the summary page.

You can publish MySQL logs with the Amazon CLI. You can call the modify-db-instance command with the following parameters:

  • --db-instance-identifier

  • --cloudwatch-logs-export-configuration

Note

A change to the --cloudwatch-logs-export-configuration option is always applied to the DB instance immediately. Therefore, the --apply-immediately and --no-apply-immediately options have no effect.

You can also publish MySQL logs by calling the following Amazon CLI commands:

Run one of these Amazon CLI commands with the following options:

  • --db-instance-identifier

  • --enable-cloudwatch-logs-exports

  • --db-instance-class

  • --engine

Other options might be required depending on the Amazon CLI command you run.

The following example modifies an existing MySQL DB instance to publish log files to CloudWatch Logs. The --cloudwatch-logs-export-configuration value is a JSON object. The key for this object is EnableLogTypes, and its value is an array of strings with any combination of audit, error, general, and slowquery.

For Linux, macOS, or Unix:

aws rds modify-db-instance \
    --db-instance-identifier mydbinstance \
    --cloudwatch-logs-export-configuration '{"EnableLogTypes":["audit","error","general","slowquery"]}'

For Windows:

aws rds modify-db-instance ^
    --db-instance-identifier mydbinstance ^
    --cloudwatch-logs-export-configuration '{"EnableLogTypes":["audit","error","general","slowquery"]}'

The following example creates a MySQL DB instance and publishes log files to CloudWatch Logs. The --enable-cloudwatch-logs-exports value is a JSON array of strings. The strings can be any combination of audit, error, general, and slowquery.

For Linux, macOS, or Unix:

aws rds create-db-instance \
    --db-instance-identifier mydbinstance \
    --enable-cloudwatch-logs-exports '["audit","error","general","slowquery"]' \
    --db-instance-class db.m4.large \
    --engine MySQL

For Windows:

aws rds create-db-instance ^
    --db-instance-identifier mydbinstance ^
    --enable-cloudwatch-logs-exports '["audit","error","general","slowquery"]' ^
    --db-instance-class db.m4.large ^
    --engine MySQL

You can publish MySQL logs with the RDS API. You can call the ModifyDBInstance action with the following parameters:

  • DBInstanceIdentifier

  • CloudwatchLogsExportConfiguration

Note

A change to the CloudwatchLogsExportConfiguration parameter is always applied to the DB instance immediately. Therefore, the ApplyImmediately parameter has no effect.

You can also publish MySQL logs by calling the following RDS API operations:

Run one of these RDS API operations with the following parameters:

  • DBInstanceIdentifier

  • EnableCloudwatchLogsExports

  • Engine

  • DBInstanceClass

Other parameters might be required depending on the Amazon CLI command you run.