Services or capabilities described in Amazon Web Services documentation might vary by Region. To see the differences applicable to the China Regions, see Getting Started with Amazon Web Services in China (PDF).

Using create-trail

You can run the create-trail command to create trails that are specifically configured to meet your business needs. When using the Amazon CLI, remember that your commands run in the Amazon Region configured for your profile. If you want to run the commands in a different Region, either change the default Region for your profile, or use the --region parameter with the command.

Creating a trail that applies to all Regions

To create a trail that applies to all Regions, use the --is-multi-region-trail option. By default, the create-trail command creates a trail that logs events only in the Amazon Region where the trail was created. To ensure that you log global service events and capture all management event activity in your Amazon account, you should create trails that log events in all Amazon Regions.

The following example creates a trail with the name my-trail and a tag with a key named Group with a value of Marketing that delivers logs from all Regions to an existing bucket named my-bucket.

aws cloudtrail create-trail --name my-trail --s3-bucket-name my-bucket --is-multi-region-trail --tags-list [key=Group,value=Marketing]

To confirm that your trail exists in all Regions, the IsMultiRegionTrail element in the output shows true.

{
    "IncludeGlobalServiceEvents": true, 
    "Name": "my-trail", 
    "TrailARN": "arn:aws:cloudtrail:us-east-2:123456789012:trail/my-trail", 
    "LogFileValidationEnabled": false, 
    "IsMultiRegionTrail": true, 
    "IsOrganizationTrail": false,
    "S3BucketName": "my-bucket"
}

Start logging for the trail

After the create-trail command completes, run the start-logging command to start logging for that trail.

The following example starts logging for a trail.

aws cloudtrail start-logging --name my-trail

This command doesn't return an output, but you can use the get-trail-status command to verify that logging has started.

aws cloudtrail get-trail-status --name my-trail

To confirm that the trail is logging, the IsLogging element in the output shows true.

{
    "LatestDeliveryTime": 1441139757.497, 
    "LatestDeliveryAttemptTime": "2015-09-01T20:35:57Z", 
    "LatestNotificationAttemptSucceeded": "2015-09-01T20:35:57Z", 
    "LatestDeliveryAttemptSucceeded": "2015-09-01T20:35:57Z", 
    "IsLogging": true, 
    "TimeLoggingStarted": "2015-09-01T00:54:02Z", 
    "StartLoggingTime": 1441068842.76, 
    "LatestDigestDeliveryTime": 1441140723.629, 
    "LatestNotificationAttemptTime": "2015-09-01T20:35:57Z", 
    "TimeLoggingStopped": ""
}

Creating a single-Region trail

The following command creates a single-Region trail. The specified Amazon S3 bucket must already exist and have the appropriate CloudTrail permissions applied. For more information, see Amazon S3 bucket policy for CloudTrail.

aws cloudtrail create-trail --name my-trail --s3-bucket-name my-bucket

For more information, see Naming requirements.

The following is example output.

{
    "IncludeGlobalServiceEvents": true, 
    "Name": "my-trail", 
    "TrailARN": "arn:aws:cloudtrail:us-east-2:123456789012:trail/my-trail", 
    "LogFileValidationEnabled": false,
    "IsMultiRegionTrail": false,
    "IsOrganizationTrail": false, 
    "S3BucketName": "my-bucket"
}

Creating a trail that applies to all Regions and that has log file validation enabled

To enable log file validation when using create-trail, use the --enable-log-file-validation option.

For information about log file validation, see Validating CloudTrail log file integrity.

The following example creates a trail that delivers logs from all Regions to the specified bucket. The command uses the --enable-log-file-validation option.

aws cloudtrail create-trail --name my-trail --s3-bucket-name my-bucket --is-multi-region-trail --enable-log-file-validation

To confirm that log file validation is enabled, the LogFileValidationEnabled element in the output shows true.

{
    "IncludeGlobalServiceEvents": true, 
    "Name": "my-trail", 
    "TrailARN": "arn:aws:cloudtrail:us-east-2:123456789012:trail/my-trail", 
    "LogFileValidationEnabled": true, 
    "IsMultiRegionTrail": true, 
    "IsOrganizationTrail": false,
    "S3BucketName": "my-bucket"
}