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Connect to AWS using the Splunk Observability Cloud API 🔗

To connect Splunk Observability Cloud to your AWS account, complete the following steps:

  1. Create an AWS connection.

  2. Review your IAM policy. Specify whether to collect both metrics and logs, and whether to gather metrics by API polling (which is the default) or through CloudWatch Metric Streams.

  3. Configure your setup.

  4. Optionally, enable Metric Streams.

  5. Collect logs.

  6. See next steps.

Create an AWS connection 🔗

To connect Splunk Observability Cloud to AWS through the Observability Cloud API, open your command-line interface and perform the following steps:

  1. Create an external AWS ID

  2. Create an AWS policy and IAM role

Create an external AWS ID 🔗

Use the -X flag on a POST request to create an AWS connection that generates an external ID:

curl -X POST 'https://app.<realm>.signalfx.com/v2/integration' \
  -H 'accept: application/json, text/plain, */*' \
  -H 'x-sf-token: <USER_API_ACCESS_TOKEN>' \
  -H 'content-type: application/json' \
  --data-raw '{"name":"AWS-connection-name","type":"AWSCloudWatch","authMethod":"ExternalId","pollRate":300000,"services":[],"regions":[]}'

Your system response looks something like this:

{
"authMethod" : "ExternalId",
"enabled" : false,
"externalId" : "<externalId>",
"id" : "<id>",
"importCloudWatch" : false,
"name" : "AWS",
"pollRate" : 300000,
"regions" : [ ],
"roleArn" : null,
"services" : [ ],
"type" : "AWSCloudWatch"
}

In the system response, note the following:

  • Values are displayed for the externalId and id fields.

  • The importCloudWatch value is set to false because CloudWatch Metrics collection has not been configured.

Create an AWS policy and IAM role 🔗

To create an AWS policy and an AWS IAM (Identity and Access Management) role with a unique Amazon Resource Name (ARN), use a PUT request with the externalId value generated in the previous step.

The following example shows a PUT request for collecting data from two regions and three AWS services. The regions involved are us-west-1 and us-east-1. Services are identified by the namespace tag.

curl -X PUT 'https://app.<realm>.signalfx.com/v2/integration/E78gbtjBcAA' \
  -H 'accept: application/json, text/plain, */*' \
  -H 'x-sf-token: <USER_API_ACCESS_TOKEN>' \
  -H 'content-type: application/json' \
  --data-raw '{"authMethod": "ExternalId", "created": 1628082281828, "creator": "E73pzL5BUAI", "customCloudWatchNamespaces": null, "enableCheckLargeVolume": false, "enabled": true, "externalId": "<externalId>", "id": "<id>", "importCloudWatch": true, "largeVolume": false, "lastUpdated": 1628090302516, "lastUpdatedBy": "<id>", "name": "AWS", "pollRate": 300000, "regions": ["us-west-1", "us-east-1"], "roleArn": "<your-aws-iam-role-arn>", "services": [], "sfxAwsAccountArn": "arn:aws:iam::134183635603:root", "syncLoadBalancerTargetGroupTags": false, "type": "AWSCloudWatch", "key": null, "token": null, "namedToken": "Default", "namespaceSyncRules": [{"namespace": "AWS/S3"}, {"namespace": "AWS/EC2"}, {"namespace": "AWS/ApplicationELB"}]}'

For further information and more examples on how to integrate AWS monitoring with Splunk Observability Cloud, see our developer documentation.

Review your IAM policy 🔗

To collect AWS data, review the permissions in this document:

Required permissions in Observability Cloud 🔗

Regardless of the services you want to use, you need the following permissions:

  • organizations:DescribeOrganization. Only needed when Amazon cost and usage metrics are enabled.

  • ec2:DescribeRegions

  • tag:GetResources

Permissions for the CloudWatch API 🔗

Besides the required permissions, include these permissions to allow Observability Cloud to collect AWS metrics using the CloudWatch API:

  • cloudwatch:GetMetricData

  • cloudwatch:GetMetricStatistics

  • cloudwatch:ListMetrics

For example:

{
  "Version": "2012-10-17",
  "Statement": [
    {
      "Effect": "Allow",
      "Action": [
        "cloudwatch:GetMetricData",
        "cloudwatch:GetMetricStatistics",
        "cloudwatch:ListMetrics",
        "ec2:DescribeRegions",
        "organizations:DescribeOrganization",
        "tag:GetResources"
      ],
      "Resource": "*"
    }
  ]
}

Permissions for Metric Streams 🔗

Besides the required permissions, include these permissions to allow Observability Cloud to collect AWS metrics using CloudWatch Metric Streams:

  • "cloudwatch:DeleteMetricStream"

  • "cloudwatch:GetMetricStream"

  • "cloudwatch:ListMetricStreams"

  • "cloudwatch:ListMetrics"

  • "cloudwatch:PutMetricStream"

  • "cloudwatch:StartMetricStreams"

  • "cloudwatch:StopMetricStreams"

  • "iam:PassRole"

These permissions include the MetricStream phrase and the iam:PassRole permissions. Note the iam:PassRole permission is restricted to resources matching the arn:aws:iam::*:role/splunk-metric-streams* pattern.

For example:

{
"Version": "2012-10-17",
"Statement": [
  {
    "Effect": "Allow",
    "Action": [
      "cloudwatch:GetMetricStream",
      "cloudwatch:ListMetrics"
      "cloudwatch:ListMetricStreams",
      "cloudwatch:PutMetricStream",
      "cloudwatch:DeleteMetricStream",
      "cloudwatch:StartMetricStreams",
      "cloudwatch:StopMetricStreams"
      "ec2:DescribeRegions",
      "organizations:DescribeOrganization",
      "tag:GetResources",
    ],
    "Resource": "*"
  },
  {
    "Effect": "Allow",
    "Action": [
      "iam:PassRole"
    ],
    "Resource": "arn:aws:iam::*:role/splunk-metric-streams*"
  }
]
}

Permissions for tag and properties collection 🔗

On top of the required permissions, you also need to include the specific permissions for the services you use in your AWS IAM policy to allow Observability Cloud to collect specific AWS’ tags and properties. You’ll be able to use Infrastructure Monitoring to filter metrics based on those tags and properies.

These are these permissions to allow Observability Cloud to collect AWS tags and properties:

  • "apigateway:GET"

  • "autoscaling:DescribeAutoScalingGroups"

  • "cloudformation:ListResources"

  • "cloudformation:GetResource"

  • "cloudfront:GetDistributionConfig"

  • "cloudfront:ListDistributions"

  • "cloudfront:ListTagsForResource"

  • "directconnect:DescribeConnections"

  • "dynamodb:DescribeTable"

  • "dynamodb:ListTables"

  • "dynamodb:ListTagsOfResource"

  • "ec2:DescribeInstances"

  • "ec2:DescribeInstanceStatus"

  • "ec2:DescribeNatGateways"

  • "ec2:DescribeRegions"

  • "ec2:DescribeReservedInstances"

  • "ec2:DescribeReservedInstancesModifications"

  • "ec2:DescribeTags"

  • "ec2:DescribeVolumes"

  • "ecS:DescribeClusters"

  • "ecs:DescribeServices"

  • "ecs:DescribeTasks"

  • "ecs:ListClusters"

  • "ecs:ListServices"

  • "ecs:ListTagsForResource"

  • "ecs:ListTaskDefinitions"

  • "ecs:ListTasks"

  • "elasticache:DescribeCacheClusters"

  • "elasticloadbalancing:DescribeLoadBalancerAttributes"

  • "elasticloadbalancing:DescribeLoadBalancers"

  • "elasticloadbalancing:DescribeTags"

  • "elasticloadbalancing:DescribeTargetGroups"

  • "elasticmapreduce:DescribeCluster"

  • "elasticmapreduce:ListClusters"

  • "es:DescribeElasticsearchDomain"

  • "es:ListDomainNames"

  • "kinesis:DescribeStream"

  • "kinesis:DescribeStream"

  • "kinesis:ListShards"

  • "kinesis:ListStreams"

  • "kinesis:ListStreams"

  • "kinesis:ListTagsForStream"

  • "kinesis:ListTagsForStream"

  • "lambda:GetAlias"

  • "lambda:ListFunctions"

  • "lambda:ListTags"

  • "rds:DescribeDBInstances"

  • "rds:ListTagsForResource"

  • "redshift:DescribeClusters"

  • "redshift:DescribeLoggingStatus"

  • "s3:GetBucketLocation"

  • "s3:GetBucketTagging"

  • "s3:ListAllMyBuckets"

  • "s3:ListBucket"

  • "states:ListActivities"

  • "states:ListStateMachines"

  • "sqs:GetQueueAttributes"

  • "sqs:ListQueues"

  • "sqs:ListQueueTags"

  • "tag:GetResources"

  • "workspaces:DescribeWorkspaces"

Add the "<service>:<permission>" pair relevant to each service in the Action array of the AWS IAM policy JSON. For example:

{
  "Version": "2012-10-17",
  "Statement": [
    {
      "Effect": "Allow",
      "Action": [
        "apigateway:GET",
        "autoscaling:DescribeAutoScalingGroups",
        "cloudformation:ListResources",
        "cloudformation:GetResource",
        "cloudfront:GetDistributionConfig",
        "cloudfront:ListDistributions",
        "cloudfront:ListTagsForResource",
        "cloudwatch:GetMetricData",
        "cloudwatch:GetMetricStatistics",
        "cloudwatch:ListMetrics",
        "directconnect:DescribeConnections",
        "dynamodb:DescribeTable",
        "dynamodb:ListTables",
        "dynamodb:ListTagsOfResource",
        "ec2:DescribeInstances",
        "ec2:DescribeInstanceStatus",
        "ec2:DescribeNatGateways",
        "ec2:DescribeRegions",
        "ec2:DescribeReservedInstances",
        "ec2:DescribeReservedInstancesModifications",
        "ec2:DescribeTags",
        "ec2:DescribeVolumes",
        "ecs:DescribeClusters",
        "ecs:DescribeServices",
        "ecs:DescribeTasks",
        "ecs:ListClusters",
        "ecs:ListServices",
        "ecs:ListTagsForResource",
        "ecs:ListTaskDefinitions",
        "ecs:ListTasks",
        "eks:DescribeCluster",
        "eks:ListClusters",
        "elasticache:DescribeCacheClusters",
        "elasticloadbalancing:DescribeLoadBalancerAttributes",
        "elasticloadbalancing:DescribeLoadBalancers",
        "elasticloadbalancing:DescribeTags",
        "elasticloadbalancing:DescribeTargetGroups",
        "elasticmapreduce:DescribeCluster",
        "elasticmapreduce:ListClusters",
        "es:DescribeElasticsearchDomain",
        "es:ListDomainNames",
        "kinesis:DescribeStream",
        "kinesis:ListShards",
        "kinesis:ListStreams",
        "kinesis:ListTagsForStream",
        "kinesisanalytics:ListApplications",
        "kinesisanalytics:DescribeApplication",
        "lambda:GetAlias",
        "lambda:ListFunctions",
        "lambda:ListTags",
        "logs:DeleteSubscriptionFilter",
        "logs:DescribeLogGroups",
        "logs:DescribeSubscriptionFilters",
        "logs:PutSubscriptionFilter",
        "organizations:DescribeOrganization",
        "rds:DescribeDBInstances",
        "rds:DescribeDBClusters",
        "rds:ListTagsForResource",
        "redshift:DescribeClusters",
        "redshift:DescribeLoggingStatus",
        "s3:GetBucketLocation",
        "s3:GetBucketLogging",
        "s3:GetBucketNotification",
        "s3:GetBucketTagging",
        "s3:ListAllMyBuckets",
        "s3:ListBucket",
        "s3:PutBucketNotification",
        "sqs:GetQueueAttributes",
        "sqs:ListQueues",
        "sqs:ListQueueTags",
        "states:ListActivities",
        "states:ListStateMachines",
        "tag:GetResources",
        "workspaces:DescribeWorkspaces"
      ],
      "Resource": "*"
    }
  ]
}

Permissions for log collection 🔗

These are the permissions to allow Observability Cloud to collect AWS logs. Include those related to your service in your IAM policy.

  • "cloudfront:GetDistributionConfig"

  • "cloudfront:ListDistributions"

  • "cloudfront:ListTagsForResource"

  • "ec2:DescribeRegions"

  • "elasticloadbalancing:DescribeLoadBalancerAttributes"

  • "elasticloadbalancing:DescribeLoadBalancers"

  • "elasticloadbalancing:DescribeTags"

  • "elasticloadbalancing:DescribeTargetGroups"

  • "logs:DeleteSubscriptionFilter"

  • "logs:DescribeLogGroups"

  • "logs:DescribeSubscriptionFilters"

  • "redshift:DescribeClusters"

  • "redshift:DescribeLoggingStatus"

  • "s3:GetBucketLogging"

  • "s3:GetBucketNotification"

  • "s3:ListAllMyBuckets"

  • "s3:ListBucket"

  • "s3:PutBucketNotification"

  • "tag:GetResources"

Permissions for usage collection and reports 🔗

Include these permissions to allow Observability Cloud to collect AWS usage data and reports:

  • "ec2:DescribeRegions"

  • "organizations:DescribeOrganization"

Configure your setup 🔗

Provide the ARN role to the Infrastructure Monitoring component of Splunk Observability Cloud. You can also configure your connection to support any of the following use cases:

  • Collect metrics for selected regions and services using the CloudWatch API.

  • Collect metrics for all regions and all services using the CloudWatch API.

  • Collect metrics using CloudWatch Metric Streams by itself or together with log collection.

The following example shows how to collect metrics from all regions and services by leaving the regions and services values unspecified.

curl -X PUT 'https://app.<realm>.signalfx.com/v2/integration/E78gbtjBcAA' \
  -H 'accept: application/json, text/plain, */*' \
  -H 'x-sf-token: <USER_API_ACCESS_TOKEN>' \
  -H 'content-type: application/json' \
  --data-raw '{"authMethod": "ExternalId", "created": 1628082281828, "creator": "E73pzL5BUAI", "customCloudWatchNamespaces": null, "enableCheckLargeVolume": false, "enabled": true, "externalId": "jobcimfczlkhwxlqwbum", "id": "E78gbtjBcAA", "importCloudWatch": true, "largeVolume": false, "lastUpdated": 1628090302516, "lastUpdatedBy": "E73pzL5BUAI", "name": "AWS", "pollRate": 300000, "regions": [], "roleArn": "<your-aws-iam-role-arn>", "services": [], "sfxAwsAccountArn": "arn:aws:iam::134183635603:root", "syncLoadBalancerTargetGroupTags": false, "type": "AWSCloudWatch", "key": null, "token": null, "namedToken": "Default", "namespaceSyncRules": []}'

Enable CloudWatch Metric Streams (optional) 🔗

To enable CloudWatch Metric Streams as an alternative to traditional API polling, follow these steps:

  1. Submit a GET request to https://api.<realm>.signalfx.com/v2/integration/<integration-id> to retrieve your current settings. Make sure to substitute your own realm and integration ID in the URL.

  2. Set the metricStreamsSyncState field to ENABLED.

  3. Set the importCloudWatch field to true.

  4. Set the enabled field to true.

  5. Submit a PUT request to the https://api.<realm>.signalfx.com/v2/integration/<integration-id> endpoint to save your updated settings.

Note

When you edit an AWS integration through the user interface for Splunk Observability Cloud, the integration ID shows in your browser address bar as an alphanumeric string in quotation marks (”) after a colon (:) at the end of the URL.

Next, to complete enabling Metric Streams:

  1. If you haven’t already, add the relevant permissions to your AWS IAM policy.

  2. In every region from which you want to stream metrics from, deploy CloudFormation.

This creates:

  • Kinesis Firehose.

  • The S3 bucket, to back up the events that Kinesis Data Firehose fails to send to the specified HTTP endpoint.

  • The IAM role that Metric Streams will use.

  • The IAM role that allows Kinesis Firehose to write the S3 bucket.

See Create an AWS integration using an external ID and ARN in the Splunk developer documentation for syntax examples.

Deploy CloudFormation 🔗

To collect CloudWatch Metric Streams or logs from all supported AWS services across all regions, select and deploy a CloudFormation template that supports metric streams or logs. Deploying the template creates the additional resources on your AWS account required both by Metric Streams (Kinesis Firehose, S3 bucket, IAM roles) and logs (Splunk AWS log collector lambda function, IAM role).

Collect logs 🔗

To collect log data from any CloudWatch log group, perform the following steps:

  1. Deploy one of the CloudFormation templates provided by Splunk that supports log collection.

  2. Update your AWS integration using the curl -X PUT request to set the logsSyncState field value to ENABLED.

  3. Review the required permissions for logs.

Observability Cloud synchronizes AWS integration settings with the logging configuration information on your AWS customer account every 5 minutes, adding triggers for newly-added services, and deleting triggers from regions or services removed from the integration.

See Splunk developer documentation about POST /integration for more examples of the request format.

Next steps 🔗

After you connect Splunk Observability Cloud with AWS, you’ll be able to track a series of metrics and analyze your AWS data in real time. See how to leverage data from integration with AWS for more information.