Amazon CloudWatch agent

The CloudWatch agent is built on the OpenTelemetry Collector, so you can use it to receive OpenTelemetry data and send it to the CloudWatch OTLP endpoints. For most customers, this is the recommended way to send OpenTelemetry telemetry to CloudWatch, because a single agent can also power curated experiences such as CloudWatch Application Signals and CloudWatch Enhanced Container Insights.

To send OpenTelemetry data through the agent today, you supply an OpenTelemetry collector configuration in YAML and append it to the agent's own configuration. Start the agent with your CloudWatch agent configuration file, then append the OpenTelemetry YAML file:

/opt/aws/amazon-cloudwatch-agent/bin/amazon-cloudwatch-agent-ctl -a fetch-config -c file:/tmp/agent.json -s
/opt/aws/amazon-cloudwatch-agent/bin/amazon-cloudwatch-agent-ctl -a append-config -c file:/tmp/otel.yaml -s

The agent merges the two configurations on startup and logs the resolved configuration. To avoid merge conflicts with pipelines that the agent creates automatically, add a custom suffix to each component and pipeline name in your OpenTelemetry YAML (for example, otlphttp/cwagent).

Supported OpenTelemetry components

The following OpenTelemetry components are available for you to configure in your appended YAML configuration. Use the component type name shown here as the key in your YAML.

The CloudWatch agent only supports writing telemetry to AWS destinations.

Configuration examples

The following examples send each signal to the corresponding CloudWatch OTLP endpoint using the otlphttp exporter and the sigv4auth extension. Each component and pipeline name uses a /cwagent suffix to avoid conflicts with pipelines that the agent creates automatically. Replace region with your AWS Region.

Metrics

receivers:
  otlp/cwagent:
    protocols:
      http:
        endpoint: 0.0.0.0:4318
processors:
  batch/cwagent: {}
exporters:
  otlphttp/cwagent:
    metrics_endpoint: https://monitoring.region.amazonaws.com/v1/metrics
    auth:
      authenticator: sigv4auth/cwagent
extensions:
  sigv4auth/cwagent:
    region: "region"
    service: "monitoring"
service:
  extensions: [sigv4auth/cwagent]
  pipelines:
    metrics/cwagent:
      receivers: [otlp/cwagent]
      processors: [batch/cwagent]
      exporters: [otlphttp/cwagent]

Logs

receivers:
  otlp/cwagent:
    protocols:
      http:
        endpoint: 0.0.0.0:4318
exporters:
  otlphttp/cwagent:
    logs_endpoint: https://logs.region.amazonaws.com/v1/logs
    headers:
      x-aws-log-group: my-log-group
      x-aws-log-stream: default
    auth:
      authenticator: sigv4auth/cwagent
extensions:
  sigv4auth/cwagent:
    region: "region"
    service: "logs"
service:
  extensions: [sigv4auth/cwagent]
  pipelines:
    logs/cwagent:
      receivers: [otlp/cwagent]
      exporters: [otlphttp/cwagent]

Traces

receivers:
  otlp/cwagent:
    protocols:
      http:
        endpoint: 0.0.0.0:4318
exporters:
  otlphttp/cwagent:
    traces_endpoint: https://xray.region.amazonaws.com/v1/traces
    auth:
      authenticator: sigv4auth/cwagent
extensions:
  sigv4auth/cwagent:
    region: "region"
    service: "xray"
service:
  extensions: [sigv4auth/cwagent]
  pipelines:
    traces/cwagent:
      receivers: [otlp/cwagent]
      exporters: [otlphttp/cwagent]