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Documentation Grafana documentation Data sources Amazon CloudWatch

Amazon CloudWatch data source

Grafana ships with built-in support for Amazon CloudWatch. This topic describes queries, templates, variables, and other configuration specific to the CloudWatch data source.

For instructions on how to add a data source to Grafana, refer to the administration documentation. Only users with the organization administrator role can add data sources. Administrators can also provision the data source with Grafana’s provisioning system, and should control pricing and manage service quotas accordingly.

Once you’ve added the data source, you can configure it so that your Grafana instance’s users can create queries in its query editor when they build dashboards and use Explore.

Note: To troubleshoot issues while setting up the CloudWatch data source, check the /var/log/grafana/grafana.log file.

Configure the data source

To access the data source configuration page:

1. Hover the cursor over the Configuration (gear) icon.
2. Select Data Sources.
3. Select the CloudWatch data source.

Configure AWS authentication

A Grafana plugin’s requests to AWS are made on behalf of an AWS Identity and Access Management (IAM) role or IAM user. The IAM user or IAM role must have the associated policies to perform certain API actions.

For authentication options and configuration details, refer to AWS authentication.

IAM policy examples

To read CloudWatch metrics and EC2 tags, instances, regions, and alarms, you must grant Grafana permissions via IAM. You can attach these permissions to the IAM role or IAM user you configured in AWS authentication.

Metrics-only:

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{
  "Version": "2012-10-17",
  "Statement": [
    {
      "Sid": "AllowReadingMetricsFromCloudWatch",
      "Effect": "Allow",
      "Action": [
        "cloudwatch:DescribeAlarmsForMetric",
        "cloudwatch:DescribeAlarmHistory",
        "cloudwatch:DescribeAlarms",
        "cloudwatch:ListMetrics",
        "cloudwatch:GetMetricData",
        "cloudwatch:GetInsightRuleReport"
      ],
      "Resource": "*"
    },
    {
      "Sid": "AllowReadingTagsInstancesRegionsFromEC2",
      "Effect": "Allow",
      "Action": ["ec2:DescribeTags", "ec2:DescribeInstances", "ec2:DescribeRegions"],
      "Resource": "*"
    },
    {
      "Sid": "AllowReadingResourcesForTags",
      "Effect": "Allow",
      "Action": "tag:GetResources",
      "Resource": "*"
    }
  ]
}

Logs-only:

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{
  "Version": "2012-10-17",
  "Statement": [
    {
      "Sid": "AllowReadingLogsFromCloudWatch",
      "Effect": "Allow",
      "Action": [
        "logs:DescribeLogGroups",
        "logs:GetLogGroupFields",
        "logs:StartQuery",
        "logs:StopQuery",
        "logs:GetQueryResults",
        "logs:GetLogEvents"
      ],
      "Resource": "*"
    },
    {
      "Sid": "AllowReadingTagsInstancesRegionsFromEC2",
      "Effect": "Allow",
      "Action": ["ec2:DescribeTags", "ec2:DescribeInstances", "ec2:DescribeRegions"],
      "Resource": "*"
    },
    {
      "Sid": "AllowReadingResourcesForTags",
      "Effect": "Allow",
      "Action": "tag:GetResources",
      "Resource": "*"
    }
  ]
}

Metrics and Logs:

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{
  "Version": "2012-10-17",
  "Statement": [
    {
      "Sid": "AllowReadingMetricsFromCloudWatch",
      "Effect": "Allow",
      "Action": [
        "cloudwatch:DescribeAlarmsForMetric",
        "cloudwatch:DescribeAlarmHistory",
        "cloudwatch:DescribeAlarms",
        "cloudwatch:ListMetrics",
        "cloudwatch:GetMetricData",
        "cloudwatch:GetInsightRuleReport"
      ],
      "Resource": "*"
    },
    {
      "Sid": "AllowReadingLogsFromCloudWatch",
      "Effect": "Allow",
      "Action": [
        "logs:DescribeLogGroups",
        "logs:GetLogGroupFields",
        "logs:StartQuery",
        "logs:StopQuery",
        "logs:GetQueryResults",
        "logs:GetLogEvents"
      ],
      "Resource": "*"
    },
    {
      "Sid": "AllowReadingTagsInstancesRegionsFromEC2",
      "Effect": "Allow",
      "Action": ["ec2:DescribeTags", "ec2:DescribeInstances", "ec2:DescribeRegions"],
      "Resource": "*"
    },
    {
      "Sid": "AllowReadingResourcesForTags",
      "Effect": "Allow",
      "Action": "tag:GetResources",
      "Resource": "*"
    }
  ]
}

**Cross-account observability: (see below) **

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{
  "Version": "2012-10-17",
  "Statement": [
    {
      "Action": ["oam:ListSinks", "oam:ListAttachedLinks"],
      "Effect": "Allow",
      "Resource": "*"
    }
  ]
}

Configure CloudWatch settings

Namespaces of Custom Metrics

Grafana can’t load custom namespaces through the CloudWatch GetMetricData API.

To make custom metrics appear in the data source’s query editor fields, specify the names of the namespaces containing the custom metrics in the data source configuration’s Namespaces of Custom Metrics field. The field accepts multiple namespaces separated by commas.

Timeout

Configure the timeout specifically for CloudWatch Logs queries.

Log queries don’t keep a single request open, and instead periodically poll for results. Therefore, they don’t recognize the standard Grafana query timeout. Because of limits on concurrently running queries in CloudWatch, they can also take longer to finish.

X-Ray trace links

To automatically add links in your logs when the log contains the @xrayTraceId field, link an X-Ray data source in the “X-Ray trace link” section of the data source configuration.

The data source select contains only existing data source instances of type X-Ray. To use this feature, you must already have an X-Ray data source configured. For details, see the X-Ray data source docs.

To view the X-Ray link, select the log row in either the Explore view or dashboard Logs panel to view the log details section.

To log the @xrayTraceId, see the AWS X-Ray documentation.

To provide the field to Grafana, your log queries must also contain the @xrayTraceId field, for example by using the query fields @message, @xrayTraceId.

Configure the data source with grafana.ini

The Grafana configuration file includes an AWS section where you can configure data source options:

Provision the data source

You can define and configure the data source in YAML files as part of Grafana’s provisioning system. For more information about provisioning, and for available configuration options, refer to Provisioning Grafana.

Provisioning examples

Using AWS SDK (default):

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apiVersion: 1
datasources:
  - name: CloudWatch
    type: cloudwatch
    jsonData:
      authType: default
      defaultRegion: eu-west-2

Using credentials’ profile name (non-default):

yaml Copy

apiVersion: 1

datasources:
  - name: CloudWatch
    type: cloudwatch
    jsonData:
      authType: credentials
      defaultRegion: eu-west-2
      customMetricsNamespaces: 'CWAgent,CustomNameSpace'
      profile: secondary

Using accessKey and secretKey:

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apiVersion: 1

datasources:
  - name: CloudWatch
    type: cloudwatch
    jsonData:
      authType: keys
      defaultRegion: eu-west-2
    secureJsonData:
      accessKey: '<your access key>'
      secretKey: '<your secret key>'

Using AWS SDK Default and ARN of IAM Role to Assume:

yaml Copy

apiVersion: 1
datasources:
  - name: CloudWatch
    type: cloudwatch
    jsonData:
      authType: default
      assumeRoleArn: arn:aws:iam::123456789012:root
      defaultRegion: eu-west-2

Query the data source

The CloudWatch data source can query data from both CloudWatch metrics and CloudWatch Logs APIs, each with its own specialized query editor.

For details, see the query editor documentation.

Use template variables

Instead of hard-coding details such as server, application, and sensor names in metric queries, you can use variables. Grafana lists these variables in dropdown select boxes at the top of the dashboard to help you change the data displayed in your dashboard. Grafana refers to such variables as template variables.

For details, see the template variables documentation.

Import pre-configured dashboards

The CloudWatch data source ships with curated and pre-configured dashboards for five of the most popular AWS services:

• Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud: Amazon EC2
• Amazon Elastic Block Store: Amazon EBS
• AWS Lambda: AWS Lambda
• Amazon CloudWatch Logs: Amazon CloudWatch Logs
• Amazon Relational Database Service: Amazon RDS

To import curated dashboards:

1. Navigate to the data source’s configuration page.

2. Select the Dashboards tab.

   This displays the curated selection of importable dashboards.

3. Select Import for the dashboard to import.

To customize an imported dashboard:

To customize one of these dashboards, we recommend that you save it under a different name. If you don’t, upgrading Grafana can overwrite the customized dashboard with the new version.

Create queries for alerting

Alerting requires queries that return numeric data, which CloudWatch Logs support. For example, you can enable alerts through the use of the stats command.

This is also a valid query for alerting on messages that include the text “Exception”:

Copy

filter @message like /Exception/
    | stats count(*) as exceptionCount by bin(1h)
    | sort exceptionCount desc

Note: If you receive an error like input data must be a wide series but got ... when trying to alert on a query, make sure that your query returns valid numeric data that can be output to a Time series panel.

For more information on Grafana alerts, refer to Alerting.

Control pricing

The Amazon CloudWatch data source for Grafana uses ListMetrics and GetMetricData CloudWatch API calls to list and retrieve metrics. Pricing for CloudWatch Logs is based on the amount of data ingested, archived, and analyzed via CloudWatch Logs Insights queries. Each time you select a dimension in the query editor, Grafana issues a ListMetrics API request. Each time you change queries in the query editor, Grafana issues a new request to the GetMetricData API.

Note: Grafana v6.5 and higher replaced all GetMetricStatistics API requests with calls to GetMetricData to provide better support for CloudWatch metric math, and enables the automatic generation of search expressions when using wildcards or disabling the Match Exact option. The GetMetricStatistics API qualified for the CloudWatch API free tier, but GetMetricData calls don’t.

For more information, refer to the CloudWatch pricing page.

Manage service quotas

AWS defines quotas, or limits, for resources, actions, and items in your AWS account. Depending on the number of queries in your dashboard and the number of users accessing the dashboard, you might reach the usage limits for various CloudWatch and CloudWatch Logs resources. Quotas are defined per account and per region.

If you use multiple regions or configured more than one CloudWatch data source to query against multiple accounts, you must request a quota increase for each account and region in which you reach the limit.

To request a quota increase, visit the AWS Service Quotas console. For more information, refer to the AWS documentation for Service Quotas and CloudWatch limits.

Cross-account observability

The CloudWatch plugin enables you to monitor and troubleshoot applications across multiple regional accounts. Using cross-account observability, you can seamlessly search, visualize and analyze metrics and logs without worrying about account boundaries.

To use this feature, configure in the AWS console under Cloudwatch Settings, a monitoring and source account, and then add the necessary IAM permissions as described above.