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Section 3 · Cloud logs

Collect high-volume CloudWatch logs using Amazon Data Firehose.

Estimated time: 1 min

AWS logs: Firehose

AWS logs Firehose architecture: CloudWatch Logs to Amazon Data Firehose to Grafana Cloud Logs

Complexity: Moderate | Infrastructure: Managed | Latency: Buffered (60s default)

You configure a subscription filter on your CloudWatch log group that sends logs to an Amazon Data Firehose stream. The stream batches the logs and delivers them to Grafana Cloud, with built-in retry and error handling. AWS handles the scaling.

CloudWatch logs collected with Firehose

Log typeSourceKey insights
CloudWatch LogsApplications, servicesApplication events, errors
RDS Instance LogsDatabase instancesQuery logs, slow queries
VPC Flow LogsNetwork interfacesNetwork traffic, security

Considerations

  • High-throughput streaming with automatic scaling
  • Automatic retry and error handling
  • Native CloudWatch integration
  • Cost-effective for high log volumes
  • Buffered delivery; the reference configuration uses a 60-second buffer
  • Both Firehose and Lambda filter with a CloudWatch subscription filter pattern; Lambda additionally supports relabeling
  • IAM role setup required, plus Amazon Data Firehose usage cost

Documentation

View the AWS Firehose logs documentation.