AWS S3 Monitoring Extension

Use Case

Captures S3 statistics from Amazon CloudWatch and displays them in the AppDynamics Metric Browser.

Prerequisites

1. Please give the following permissions to the account being used to with the extension.

   cloudwatch:ListMetrics
   cloudwatch:GetMetricStatistics
   

2. Before the extension is installed, the prerequisites mentioned here need to be met. Please do not proceed with the extension installation if the specified prerequisites are not met.
3. Download and install Apache Maven which is configured with Java 8 to build the extension artifact from source. You can check the java version used in maven using command mvn -v or mvn --version. If your maven is using some other java version then please download java 8 for your platform and set JAVA_HOME parameter before starting maven.
4. The extension needs to be able to connect to AWS Cloudwatch in order to collect and send metrics. To do this, you will have to either establish a remote connection in between the extension and the product using access key and secret key, or have an agent running on EC2 instance, which you can use with instance profile.

Installation

1. Clone the "aws-s3-monitoring-extension" repo using git clone <repoUrl> command.
2. Run 'mvn clean install' from aws-s3-monitoring-extension
3. Copy and unzip AWSS3Monitor-<version>.zip from target directory into <machine_agent_dir>/monitors/.
4. Edit config.yml file in AWSS3Monitor and provide the required configuration (see Configuration section)
5. Restart the Machine Agent.

Please place the extension in the "monitors" directory of your Machine Agent installation directory. Do not place the extension in the "extensions" directory of your Machine Agent installation directory.

Configuration

In order to use the extension, you need to update the config.yml file that is present in the extension folder. The following is a step-by-step explanation of the configurable fields that are present in the config.yml file.

1. If SIM is enabled, then use the following metricPrefix -

   metricPrefix: "Custom Metrics|AWS S3|"

   Else, configure the "COMPONENT_ID" under which the metrics need to be reported. This can be done by changing the value of <COMPONENT_ID> in
   metricPrefix: "Server|Component:<COMPONENT_ID>|Custom Metrics|AWS S3|".
   
   For example,

   metricPrefix: "Server|Component:100|Custom Metrics|AWS S3|"

More details around metric prefix can be found here.

2. Provide accessKey(required) and secretKey(required) of your account(s), also provide displayAccountName(any name that represents your account) and
   regions(required). If you are running this extension inside an EC2 instance which has IAM profile configured then you don't have to configure accessKey and secretKey values, extension will use IAM profile to authenticate. You can provide multiple accounts and regions as below -

   accounts:
     - awsAccessKey: "XXXXXXXX1"
       awsSecretKey: "XXXXXXXXXX1"
       displayAccountName: "TestAccount_1"
       regions: ["us-east-1","us-west-1","us-west-2"]
   
     - awsAccessKey: "XXXXXXXX2"
       awsSecretKey: "XXXXXXXXXX2"
       displayAccountName: "TestAccount_2"
       regions: ["eu-central-1","eu-west-1"]
   

3. If you want to encrypt the awsAccessKey and awsSecretKey then follow the "Credentials Encryption" section and provide the encrypted values in awsAccessKey and awsSecretKey. Configure enableDecryption of credentialsDecryptionConfig to true and provide the encryption key in encryptionKey.
   For example,

   #Encryption key for Encrypted password.
   credentialsDecryptionConfig:
       enableDecryption: "true"
       encryptionKey: "XXXXXXXX"
   

4. Provide all valid proxy information if you use it. If not, leave this section as is.

   proxyConfig:
     host:
     port:
     username:
     password:
   

5. To report metrics only from specific dimension values, configure the dimension section as below -

   dimensions:
     - name: "StorageType"
       displayName: "Storage Type"
       values: [".*"] #.* will fetch AllStorageTypes
     - name: "FilterId"
       displayName: "Filter Id"
       values: ["EntireBucket"]
     - name: "BucketName"
       displayName: "Bucket Name"
       values: ["Sample"]
   

   If these fields are left empty, the metrics which require that dimension will not be reported.
   In order to monitor everything under a dimension, you can simply use ".*" to pull everything from your AWS Environment.

6. Configure the metrics section.
   For configuring the metrics, the following properties can be used:

For example,

- name: "BucketSizeBytes"
  alias: "Bytes per minute (Unit - byte; StatType - sum)"
  statType: "ave"
  aggregationType: "AVERAGE"
  timeRollUpType: "AVERAGE"
  clusterRollUpType: "INDIVIDUAL"
  delta: false
  multiplier: 1

All these metric properties are optional, and the default value shown in the table is applied to the metric(if a property has not been specified) by default.

7. CloudWatch metrics are delivered on a best-effort basis. This means that the delivery of metrics is not guaranteed to be on-time.
   There may be a case where the metric is updated in CloudWatch much later than when it was processed, with an associated delay.
   For S3, the delay can be 4 - 5 minutes. There is a possibility that the extension does not capture the metric, which is the reason there is a time window. The time window allows
   the metric to be updated in CloudWatch before the extension collects it.

   metricsTimeRange:
     startTimeInMinsBeforeNow: 9
     endTimeInMinsBeforeNow: 4
   

8. This field is set as per the defaults suggested by AWS. You can change this if your limit is different.

   getMetricStatisticsRateLimit: 400
   

9. The maximum number of retry attempts for failed requests that can be re-tried.

   maxErrorRetrySize: 3
   

config.yml

Please avoid using tab (\t) when editing yaml files. Please copy all the contents of the config.yml file and go to Yaml Validator . On reaching the website, paste the contents and press the “Go” button on the bottom left.
If you get a valid output, that means your formatting is correct and you may move on to the next step.

Metrics

The AWS S3 Extension provides two categories of metrics for AWS S3 as listed here.

1. AWS S3 CloudWatch Storage Metrics
   
   The AWS S3 Extension provides storage metrics, by default.These metrics are provided daily, free of cost by CloudWatch.
   However, the behavior observed in CloudWatch for the storage metrics is that at 00:00 UTC, the metrics are provided with a timestamp of the previous day.
   
   For example, if the current timestamp is Oct 5th - 00:00 UTC, the storage metrics are reported in CloudWatch with a timestamp of
   Oct 4th - 00:00 UTC. The metrics are delayed by 24 hours. This is the reason the extension also reports storage metrics with a latency of 24 hours.

2. AWS S3 CloudWatch Request Metrics
   
   Request metrics are are paid metrics available in AWS CloudWatch every 1 minute with some latency(upto 4 min). Request metrics have to be enabled as described here.
   The extension also supports filtering of metrics on a subset of objects in S3.To get filter-level metrics, a metrics filter has to be enabled on the buckets that are being monitored as described here.

Credentials Encryption

Please visit this page to get detailed instructions on password encryption. The steps in this document will guide you through the whole process.

Extensions Workbench

Workbench is an inbuilt feature provided with each extension in order to assist you to fine tune the extension setup before you actually deploy it on the controller. Please review the following document on How to use the Extensions WorkBench

Troubleshooting

Please follow the steps listed in this troubleshooting-document in order to troubleshoot your issue. These are a set of common issues that customers might have faced during the installation of the extension.

Contributing

Always feel free to fork and contribute any changes directly here on GitHub.

Version

Note: While extensions are maintained and supported by customers under the open-source licensing model, they interact with agents and Controllers that are subject to AppDynamics’ maintenance and support policy. Some extensions have been tested with AppDynamics 4.5.13+ artifacts, but you are strongly recommended against using versions that are no longer supported.