Introduction

This section describes how to monitor Amazon Web Services (AWS) in SL1 using the Amazon Web Services  and AWS Extended Services PowerPacks. It also describes the reports you can generate and the dashboards you can view after you collect data from AWS, as well as the Run Book Action and Automation policies you can use to automate certain aspects of monitoring AWS.

Use the following menu options to navigate the SL1 user interface:

• To view a pop-out list of menu options, click the menu icon ().
• To view a page containing all of the menu options, click the Advanced menu icon ().

The following sections provide an overview of Amazon Web Services (AWS) and the Amazon Web Services PowerPack:

For more information about setting up a SL1 appliance on an Amazon Web Services EC2 instance, see the section on Deploying ScienceLogic Appliances in the Amazon Cloud.

For more information about setting up an AWS Elasticsearch, Logstash, and Kibana (ELK) stack, see the section on Monitoring AWS ELK Stacks.

What is AWS?

Amazon Web Services is Amazon's "Infrastructure as a Service" offering. AWS includes multiple products (called Services) including compute, DNS, networking, content delivery, analytics, storage, and database services, among many others.

What is an AWS Region?

An AWS region is a geographical area made up of availability zones located within that region. Each zone may have multiple data centers. Regions have a canonical naming scheme of:

country/continent-direction-number

For example, the 'us-east-1' region is located in the United States, on the east coast, and it is the #1 data center in that region.

AWS regions are also commonly referred to by the city or state in which the data center is located. For example, us-west-2 is commonly referred to as "Oregon", ap-northeast-1 is commonly referred to as "Tokyo", etc.

The Dynamic Applications in the Amazon Web Services PowerPack create a "region" component device for each discovered region. The component devices for regions include both the region name and city/state description. For example, the Dynamic Applications might discover a component device called "US West (Oregon): us-west-2". Component devices that represent region-specific AWS services reside under the appropriate "region" component device and appropriate "zone" component device.

NOTE: For more information about AWS regions, see https://docs.aws.amazon.com/general/latest/gr/rande.html.

What is an AWS Zone?

All instances of an AWS service reside in one or more Zones. A zone is a physical network and power partition (air-gap firewall) within a regional data center. Some AWS instances, like EC2 instances, are in a single zone. Other AWS instances, like an SNS queue, exist in all zones simultaneously.

The AWS naming convention for a zone is:

region[a-z]

For example, zone 'a' for the region 'us-east-1' is named 'us-east-1a'.

When a user deploys a service instance, the user can specify a "zone preference", but the final zone for that service instance is decided by AWS, not the user.

The Dynamic Applications in the Amazon Web Services PowerPack create a "zone" component device for each discovered zone.

AWS services with a specific zone affinity reside under the appropriate zone component device. For example, the Dynamic Applications in the PowerPack might discover the zone "us-west-1b" and create a component device called "us-west-1b".

AWS services that are specific to a zone reside under the appropriate "region" component device and appropriate "zone" component device. The Dynamic Applications in the PowerPack create a "multi-zoned" component device for services that are inherently zone agnostic such as the Simple Queue Service (SQS).

Component devices that represent Zones are a named container with no associated performance metrics.

What Does the Amazon Web Services PowerPack Monitor?

To collect data from Amazon Web Services, the ScienceLogic Data Collector or All-In-One Appliance connects via HTTPS to the URLs listed in the following AWS document: http://docs.aws.amazon.com/general/latest/gr/rande.html.

The Amazon Web Services PowerPack includes Dynamic Applications that can monitor performance metrics and collect configuration data for numerous AWS Services and components, which can be viewed in the Key Metrics Collected by the PowerPack section.

Not all AWS services are supported by all AWS regions. For more information about which AWS services are supported by which AWS regions, see https://aws.amazon.com/about-aws/global-infrastructure/regional-product-services.

To monitor performance metrics for an AutoScale group, you must activate detailed instance monitoring for that group. For instructions on how to perform this task, see http://docs.aws.amazon.com/AutoScaling/latest/DeveloperGuide/as-instance-monitoring.html.

When monitoring EC2-backed ECS clusters, you can optionally use the Docker PowerPack to collect container information in addition to what the AWS API provides for the ECS service. For more information, see the section on Configuring AWS Integration with Docker.

To monitor Lambda services, you must first configure some of the Dynamic Applications in the Amazon Web Services PowerPack prior to discovery. For more information, see the Configuring "AWS Lambda Service Discovery" and Configuring "AWS Lambda Function Qualified Discovery" sections.

The Dynamic Applications in the PowerPack also monitor:

• The general health of each AWS service

• Current billing metrics for each service aligned with the account
• Custom, application-specific performance metrics configured on the account
• The state of any AWS Alarms set on metrics in Cloudwatch

In addition to Dynamic Applications, the PowerPack includes the following features:

• Event Policies and corresponding alerts that are triggered when AWS component devices meet certain status criteria

• Device Classes for each of the AWS component devices monitored
• Sample Credentials for discovering AWS component devices
• Reports and dashboards that display information about AWS instances and component devices
• Run Book Action and Automation policies that can automate certain AWS monitoring processes

To view Amazon Web Services dashboards, you must first install the Amazon Web Services: Dashboards PowerPack. For more information, see the AWS Dashboards section.

Installing the Amazon Web Services PowerPack

Before completing the steps in this section, you must import and install the latest version of the Amazon Web Services PowerPack.

If you are upgrading from an earlier version of the PowerPack, see the Release Notes for the version you are installing for upgrade instructions.

By default, installing a new version of a PowerPack overwrites all content from a previous version of that PowerPack that has already been installed on the target system. You can use the Enable Selective PowerPack Field Protection setting in the Behavior Settings page (System > Settings > Behavior) to prevent new PowerPacks from overwriting local changes for some commonly customized fields. For more information, see the section on Global Settings.

To download and install the PowerPack:

1. Search for and download the PowerPack from the PowerPacks page (Product Downloads > PowerPacks & SyncPacks) at the ScienceLogic Support Site.
2. In SL1, go to the PowerPacks page (System > Manage > PowerPacks).
3. Click the Actions button and choose Import PowerPack. The Import PowerPack dialog box appears.
4. Click [Browse] and navigate to the PowerPack file from step 1.
5. Select the PowerPack file and click Import. The PowerPack Installer modal displays a list of the PowerPack contents.
6. Click Install. The PowerPack is added to the PowerPacks page.

If you exit the PowerPack Installer modal without installing the imported PowerPack, the imported PowerPack will not appear in the PowerPacks page. However, the imported PowerPack will appear in the Imported PowerPacks modal. This page appears when you click the Actions menu and select Install PowerPack.

If you need to upgrade to a new version of the Amazon Web Services PowerPack, do not uninstall the PowerPack on SL1 versions 11.2.0 and above first, as guided discovery workflows will be lost. Follow the upgrade instructions in the Amazon Web Services PowerPack release notes.

PowerPacks

This manual describes content from the following PowerPack versions:

• Amazon Web Services, version 127
• AWS Extended Services, version 102

The following video outlines opportunities and challenges with Amazon Web Services: