CloudWatch

Set up CloudWatch ContainerInsights on Amazon EKS

Verify Prerequisites

The EKS cluster will need IAM service account roles associated with CloudWatchAgentServerPolicy attached.

export CLUSTER_NAME=<>
export CLUSTER_REGION=<>

eksctl utils associate-iam-oidc-provider --region=$CLUSTER_REGION --cluster=$CLUSTER_NAME --approve
eksctl create iamserviceaccount --name cloudwatch-agent --namespace amazon-cloudwatch --cluster $CLUSTER_NAME --region $CLUSTER_REGION --approve --override-existing-serviceaccounts --attach-policy-arn arn:aws:iam::aws:policy/CloudWatchAgentServerPolicy
eksctl create iamserviceaccount --name fluent-bit --namespace amazon-cloudwatch --cluster $CLUSTER_NAME --region $CLUSTER_REGION --approve --override-existing-serviceaccounts --attach-policy-arn arn:aws:iam::aws:policy/CloudWatchAgentServerPolicy

Install

To install an optimized QuickStart configuration, enter the following command:

FluentBitHttpPort='2020'
FluentBitReadFromHead='Off'
[[ ${FluentBitReadFromHead} = 'On' ]] && FluentBitReadFromTail='Off'|| FluentBitReadFromTail='On'
[[ -z ${FluentBitHttpPort} ]] && FluentBitHttpServer='Off' || FluentBitHttpServer='On'
curl https://raw.githubusercontent.com/aws-samples/amazon-cloudwatch-container-insights/latest/k8s-deployment-manifest-templates/deployment-mode/daemonset/container-insights-monitoring/quickstart/cwagent-fluent-bit-quickstart.yaml | sed 's/{{cluster_name}}/'${CLUSTER_NAME}'/;s/{{region_name}}/'${CLUSTER_REGION}'/;s/{{http_server_toggle}}/"'${FluentBitHttpServer}'"/;s/{{http_server_port}}/"'${FluentBitHttpPort}'"/;s/{{read_from_head}}/"'${FluentBitReadFromHead}'"/;s/{{read_from_tail}}/"'${FluentBitReadFromTail}'"/' | kubectl apply -f - 

To verify the installation, you can run the list-metrics command and check that metrics have been created. It may take up to 15 minutes for the metrics to populate.

aws cloudwatch list-metrics --namespace ContainerInsights --region $CLUSTER_REGION

An example of the logs that will be available after installation are the logs of the Pods on your cluster. This way, the Pod logs can still be accessed past their default storage time. This also allows for an easy way to view logs for all Pods on your cluster without having to directly connect to your EKS cluster.

The logs can be accessed by through CloudWatch log groups cloudwatch

To view individual Pod logs, select /aws/containerinsights/YOUR_CLUSTER_NAME/application. application

The following image is an example of the jupyter-web-app Pod logs available through CloudWatch. jupyter-logs

For a full list of metrics that are provided by default, see Amazon EKS and Kubernetes Container Insights metrics.

The metrics are grouped by varying parameters such as Cluster, Namespace, or PodName. cloudwatch-metrics

The following image is an example of the graphed metrics for the istio-system namespace that deals with internet traffic. cloudwatch-namespace-metrics

See Viewing available metrics for more information on CloudWatch metrics. Select the ContainerInsights metric namespace.

You can see the full list of logs and metrics through the Amazon CloudWatch AWS Console.

Uninstall

To uninstall CloudWatch ContainerInsights, enter the following command:

curl https://raw.githubusercontent.com/aws-samples/amazon-cloudwatch-container-insights/latest/k8s-deployment-manifest-templates/deployment-mode/daemonset/container-insights-monitoring/quickstart/cwagent-fluent-bit-quickstart.yaml | sed 's/{{cluster_name}}/'${ClusterName}'/;s/{{region_name}}/'${LogRegion}'/;s/{{http_server_toggle}}/"'${FluentBitHttpServer}'"/;s/{{http_server_port}}/"'${FluentBitHttpPort}'"/;s/{{read_from_head}}/"'${FluentBitReadFromHead}'"/;s/{{read_from_tail}}/"'${FluentBitReadFromTail}'"/' | kubectl delete -f -

Additional information

For full documentation and additional configuration options, see Quick Start setup for Container Insights on Amazon EKS and Kubernetes.

Last modified September 1, 2023: v1.7.0-aws-b1.0.3 website changes (#791) (7faf1a5)