Creating a trail for an organization with the Amazon CLI
You can create an organization trail by using the Amazon CLI. The Amazon CLI is regularly updated with additional functionality and commands. To help ensure success, be sure that you have installed or updated to a recent Amazon CLI version before you begin.
Note
The examples in this section are specific to creating and updating organization trails. For examples of using the Amazon CLI to manage trails, see Managing trails with the Amazon CLI and Configuring CloudWatch Logs monitoring with the Amazon CLI. When creating or updating an organization trail with the Amazon CLI, you must use an Amazon CLI profile in the management account or delegated administrator account with sufficient permissions. If you are converting an organization trail to a non-organization trail, you must use the management account for the organization.
You must configure the Amazon S3 bucket used for an organization trail with sufficient permissions.
Create or update an Amazon S3 bucket to use to store the log files for an organization trail
You must specify an Amazon S3 bucket to receive the log files for an organization trail. This bucket must have a policy that allows CloudTrail to put the log files for the organization into the bucket.
The following is an example policy for an Amazon S3 bucket named
amzn-s3-demo-bucket
, which is owned by the organization's
management account. Replace amzn-s3-demo-bucket
,
region
, managementAccountID
,
trailName
, and o-organizationID
with the values for your organization
This bucket policy contains three statements.
-
The first statement allows CloudTrail to call the Amazon S3
GetBucketAcl
action on the Amazon S3 bucket. -
The second statement allows logging in the event the trail is changed from an organization trail to a trail for that account only.
-
The third statement allows logging for an organization trail.
The example policy includes an aws:SourceArn
condition key for the Amazon S3
bucket policy. The IAM global condition key aws:SourceArn
helps ensure that
CloudTrail writes to the S3 bucket only for a specific trail or trails. In an organization trail,
the value of aws:SourceArn
must be a trail ARN that is owned by the management
account, and uses the management account ID.
{ "Version": "2012-10-17", "Statement": [ { "Sid": "AWSCloudTrailAclCheck20150319", "Effect": "Allow", "Principal": { "Service": [ "cloudtrail.amazonaws.com" ] }, "Action": "s3:GetBucketAcl", "Resource": "arn:aws:s3:::
amzn-s3-demo-bucket
", "Condition": { "StringEquals": { "aws:SourceArn": "arn:aws:cloudtrail:region
:managementAccountID
:trail/trailName
" } } }, { "Sid": "AWSCloudTrailWrite20150319", "Effect": "Allow", "Principal": { "Service": [ "cloudtrail.amazonaws.com" ] }, "Action": "s3:PutObject", "Resource": "arn:aws:s3:::amzn-s3-demo-bucket
/AWSLogs/managementAccountID
/*", "Condition": { "StringEquals": { "s3:x-amz-acl": "bucket-owner-full-control", "aws:SourceArn": "arn:aws:cloudtrail:region
:managementAccountID
:trail/trailName
" } } }, { "Sid": "AWSCloudTrailOrganizationWrite20150319", "Effect": "Allow", "Principal": { "Service": [ "cloudtrail.amazonaws.com" ] }, "Action": "s3:PutObject", "Resource": "arn:aws:s3:::amzn-s3-demo-bucket
/AWSLogs/o-organizationID
/*", "Condition": { "StringEquals": { "s3:x-amz-acl": "bucket-owner-full-control", "aws:SourceArn": "arn:aws:cloudtrail:region
:managementAccountID
:trail/trailName
" } } } ] }
This example policy does not allow any users from member accounts to access the log files created for the organization. By default, organization log files are accessible only to the management account. For information about how to allow read access to the Amazon S3 bucket for IAM users in member accounts, see Sharing CloudTrail log files between Amazon accounts.
Enabling CloudTrail as a trusted service in Amazon Organizations
Before you can create an organization trail, you must first enable all features in Organizations. For more information, see Enabling All Features in Your Organization, or run the following command using a profile with sufficient permissions in the management account:
aws organizations enable-all-features
After you enable all features, you must configure Organizations to trust CloudTrail as a trusted service. .
To create the trusted service relationship between Amazon Organizations and CloudTrail, open a
terminal or command line and use a profile in the management account. Run the
aws organizations enable-aws-service-access
command, as
demonstrated in the following example.
aws organizations enable-aws-service-access --service-principal cloudtrail.amazonaws.com
Using create-trail
Creating an organization trail that applies to all Regions
To create an organization trail that applies to all Regions, add the
--is-organization-trail
and
--is-multi-region-trail
options.
Note
When you create an organization trail with the Amazon CLI, you must use an Amazon CLI profile in the management account or delegated administrator account with sufficient permissions.
The following example creates an organization trail that delivers logs from
all Regions to an existing bucket named
:amzn-s3-demo-bucket
aws cloudtrail create-trail --name
my-trail
--s3-bucket-nameamzn-s3-demo-bucket
--is-organization-trail --is-multi-region-trail
To confirm that your trail exists in all Regions, the
IsOrganizationTrail
and IsMultiRegionTrail
parameters in the output are both set to true
:
{ "IncludeGlobalServiceEvents": true, "Name": "
my-trail
", "TrailARN": "arn:aws:cloudtrail:us-east-2
:123456789012
:trail/my-trail
", "LogFileValidationEnabled": false, "IsMultiRegionTrail": true, "IsOrganizationTrail": true, "S3BucketName": "amzn-s3-demo-bucket
" }
Note
Run the start-logging
command to start logging for your
trail. For more information, see Stopping and starting logging for a trail.
Creating an organization trail as a single-Region trail
The following command creates an organization trail that only logs events in a single Amazon Web Services Region, also known as a single-Region trail. The Amazon Region where events are logged is the Region specified in the configuration profile for the Amazon CLI.
aws cloudtrail create-trail --name
my-trail
--s3-bucket-nameamzn-s3-demo-bucket
--is-organization-trail
For more information, see Naming requirements for CloudTrail resources, S3 buckets, and KMS keys.
Sample output:
{ "IncludeGlobalServiceEvents": true, "Name": "
my-trail
", "TrailARN": "arn:aws:cloudtrail:us-east-2
:123456789012
:trail/my-trail
", "LogFileValidationEnabled": false, "IsMultiRegionTrail": false, "IsOrganizationTrail": true, "S3BucketName": "amzn-s3-demo-bucket
" }
By default, the create-trail
command creates a single-Region
trail that does not enable log file validation.
Note
Run the start-logging
command to start logging for your
trail.
Running update-trail to update an organization trail
You can run the update-trail
command to change the configuration
settings for an organization trail, or to apply an existing trail for a single Amazon
account to an entire organization. Remember that you can run the
update-trail
command only from the Region in which the trail was
created.
Note
If you use the Amazon CLI or one of the Amazon SDKs to update a trail, be sure that the trail's bucket policy is up-to-date. For more information, see Creating a trail for an organization with the Amazon CLI.
When you update an organization trail with the Amazon CLI, you must use an Amazon CLI profile in the management account or delegated administrator account with sufficient permissions. If you want to convert an organization trail to a non-organization trail, you must use the management account for the organization, because the management account is the owner of all organization resources.
CloudTrail updates organization trails in member accounts even if a resource validation fails. Examples of validation failures include:
-
an incorrect Amazon S3 bucket policy
-
an incorrect Amazon SNS topic policy
-
inability to deliver to a CloudWatch Logs log group
-
insufficient permission to encrypt using a KMS key
A member account with CloudTrail permissions can see any validation failures for an organization trail by viewing the trail's details page on the CloudTrail console, or by running the Amazon CLI get-trail-status command.
Applying an existing trail to an organization
To change an existing trail so that it also applies to an organization instead
of a single Amazon account, add the --is-organization-trail
option,
as shown in the following example.
Note
Use the management account to change an existing non-organization trail to an organization trail.
aws cloudtrail update-trail --name
my-trail
--is-organization-trail
To confirm that the trail now applies to the organization, the
IsOrganizationTrail
parameter in the output has a value of
true
.
{ "IncludeGlobalServiceEvents": true, "Name": "
my-trail
", "TrailARN": "arn:aws:cloudtrail:us-east-2
:123456789012
:trail/my-trail
", "LogFileValidationEnabled": false, "IsMultiRegionTrail": true, "IsOrganizationTrail": true, "S3BucketName": "amzn-s3-demo-bucket
" }
In the preceding example, the trail was configured to apply to all Regions
("IsMultiRegionTrail": true
). A trail that applied only to a
single Region would show "IsMultiRegionTrail": false
in the
output.
Converting an organization trail that applies to one Region to apply to all Regions
To change an existing organization trail so that it applies to all Regions,
add the --is-multi-region-trail
option as shown in the following
example.
aws cloudtrail update-trail --name
my-trail
--is-multi-region-trail
To confirm that the trail now applies to all Regions, the
IsMultiRegionTrail
parameter in the output has a value of
true
.
{ "IncludeGlobalServiceEvents": true, "Name": "
my-trail
", "TrailARN": "arn:aws:cloudtrail:us-east-2
:123456789012
:trail/my-trail
", "LogFileValidationEnabled": false, "IsMultiRegionTrail": true, "IsOrganizationTrail": true, "S3BucketName": "amzn-s3-demo-bucket
" }