Amazon ECS and InfluxDB Integration

Input and output integration overview

The Amazon ECS Input Plugin enables Telegraf to gather metrics from AWS ECS containers, providing detailed insights into container performance and resource usage.

The InfluxDB plugin writes metrics to the InfluxDB HTTP service, allowing for efficient storage and retrieval of time series data.

Integration details

Amazon ECS

The Amazon ECS plugin for Telegraf is designed to collect metrics from ECS (Elastic Container Service) tasks running on AWS Fargate or EC2 instances. By utilizing the ECS metadata and stats API endpoints (v2 and v3), it fetches real-time information about container performance and health within a task. This plugin operates within the same task as the inspected workload, ensuring seamless access to metadata and statistics. Notably, it incorporates ECS-specific features that distinguish it from the Docker input plugin, such as handling unique ECS metadata formats and statistics. Users can include or exclude specific containers and adjust which container states to monitor, along with defining tag options for ECS labels. This flexibility allows for a tailored monitoring experience that aligns with the specific needs of an ECS environment, thereby enhancing observability and control over containerized applications.

InfluxDB

The InfluxDB Telegraf plugin serves to send metrics to the InfluxDB HTTP API, facilitating the storage and query of time series data in a structured manner. Integrating seamlessly with InfluxDB, this plugin provides essential features such as token-based authentication and support for multiple InfluxDB cluster nodes, ensuring reliable and scalable data ingestion. Through its configurability, users can specify options like organization, destination buckets, and HTTP-specific settings, providing flexibility to tailor how data is sent and stored. The plugin also supports secret management for sensitive data, which enhances security in production environments. This plugin is particularly beneficial in modern observability stacks where real-time analytics and storage of time series data are crucial.

Configuration

Amazon ECS

[[inputs.ecs]]
  # endpoint_url = ""
  # container_name_include = []
  # container_name_exclude = []
  # container_status_include = []
  # container_status_exclude = []
  ecs_label_include = [ "com.amazonaws.ecs.*" ]
  ecs_label_exclude = []
  # timeout = "5s"

[[inputs.ecs]]
  endpoint_url = "http://169.254.170.2"
  # container_name_include = []
  # container_name_exclude = []
  # container_status_include = []
  # container_status_exclude = []
  ecs_label_include = [ "com.amazonaws.ecs.*" ]
  ecs_label_exclude = []
  # timeout = "5s"

InfluxDB

[[outputs.influxdb]]
  ## The full HTTP or UDP URL for your InfluxDB instance.
  ##
  ## Multiple URLs can be specified for a single cluster, only ONE of the
  ## urls will be written to each interval.
  # urls = ["unix:///var/run/influxdb.sock"]
  # urls = ["udp://127.0.0.1:8089"]
  # urls = ["http://127.0.0.1:8086"]

  ## Local address to bind when connecting to the server
  ## If empty or not set, the local address is automatically chosen.
  # local_address = ""

  ## The target database for metrics; will be created as needed.
  ## For UDP url endpoint database needs to be configured on server side.
  # database = "telegraf"

  ## The value of this tag will be used to determine the database.  If this
  ## tag is not set the 'database' option is used as the default.
  # database_tag = ""

  ## If true, the 'database_tag' will not be included in the written metric.
  # exclude_database_tag = false

  ## If true, no CREATE DATABASE queries will be sent.  Set to true when using
  ## Telegraf with a user without permissions to create databases or when the
  ## database already exists.
  # skip_database_creation = false

  ## Name of existing retention policy to write to.  Empty string writes to
  ## the default retention policy.  Only takes effect when using HTTP.
  # retention_policy = ""

  ## The value of this tag will be used to determine the retention policy.  If this
  ## tag is not set the 'retention_policy' option is used as the default.
  # retention_policy_tag = ""

  ## If true, the 'retention_policy_tag' will not be included in the written metric.
  # exclude_retention_policy_tag = false

  ## Write consistency (clusters only), can be: "any", "one", "quorum", "all".
  ## Only takes effect when using HTTP.
  # write_consistency = "any"

  ## Timeout for HTTP messages.
  # timeout = "5s"

  ## HTTP Basic Auth
  # username = "telegraf"
  # password = "metricsmetricsmetricsmetrics"

  ## HTTP User-Agent
  # user_agent = "telegraf"

  ## UDP payload size is the maximum packet size to send.
  # udp_payload = "512B"

  ## Optional TLS Config for use on HTTP connections.
  # tls_ca = "/etc/telegraf/ca.pem"
  # tls_cert = "/etc/telegraf/cert.pem"
  # tls_key = "/etc/telegraf/key.pem"
  ## Use TLS but skip chain & host verification
  # insecure_skip_verify = false

  ## HTTP Proxy override, if unset values the standard proxy environment
  ## variables are consulted to determine which proxy, if any, should be used.
  # http_proxy = "http://corporate.proxy:3128"

  ## Additional HTTP headers
  # http_headers = {"X-Special-Header" = "Special-Value"}

  ## HTTP Content-Encoding for write request body, can be set to "gzip" to
  ## compress body or "identity" to apply no encoding.
  # content_encoding = "gzip"

  ## When true, Telegraf will output unsigned integers as unsigned values,
  ## i.e.: "42u".  You will need a version of InfluxDB supporting unsigned
  ## integer values.  Enabling this option will result in field type errors if
  ## existing data has been written.
  # influx_uint_support = false

  ## When true, Telegraf will omit the timestamp on data to allow InfluxDB
  ## to set the timestamp of the data during ingestion. This is generally NOT
  ## what you want as it can lead to data points captured at different times
  ## getting omitted due to similar data.
  # influx_omit_timestamp = false

Input and output integration examples

Amazon ECS

1. Dynamic Container Monitoring: Use the Amazon ECS plugin to monitor container health dynamically within an autoscaling ECS architecture. As new containers spin up or down, the plugin will automatically adjust the metrics it collects, ensuring that each container’s performance data is captured efficiently without manual configuration.

2. Custom Resource Allocation Alerts: Implement the ECS plugin to establish thresholds for resource usage per container. By integrating with notification systems, teams can receive alerts when a container’s CPU or memory usage exceeds predefined limits, enabling proactive resource management and maintaining application performance.

3. Cost-Optimization Dashboard: Leverage the metrics gathered from the ECS plugin to create a dashboard that visualizes resource usage and costs associated with each container. This insight allows organizations to identify underutilized resources, optimizing costs associated with their container infrastructure, thus driving financial efficiency in cloud operations.

4. Advanced Container Security Monitoring: Utilize this plugin in conjunction with security tools to monitor ECS container metrics for anomalies. By continuously analyzing usage patterns, any sudden spikes or irregular behaviors can be detected, prompting automated security responses and maintaining system integrity.

InfluxDB

1. Real-Time System Monitoring: Utilize the InfluxDB plugin to capture and store metrics from a range of system components, such as CPU usage, memory consumption, and disk I/O. By pushing these metrics into InfluxDB, you can create a live dashboard that visualizes system performance in real time. This setup not only helps in identifying performance bottlenecks but also assists in proactive capacity planning by analyzing trends over time.

2. Performance Tracking for Web Applications: Automatically gather and push metrics related to web application performance, such as request durations, error rates, and user interactions, to InfluxDB. By employing this plugin in your monitoring stack, you can use the stored metrics to generate reports and analyses that help understand user behavior and application efficiency, thus guiding development and optimization efforts.

3. IoT Data Aggregation: Leverage the InfluxDB Telegraf plugin to collect sensor data from various IoT devices and store it in a centralized InfluxDB instance. This use case enables you to analyze trends and patterns in environmental or machine data over time, facilitating smarter decisions and predictive maintenance strategies. By integrating IoT data into InfluxDB, organizations can harness the power of historical data analysis to drive innovation and operational efficiency.

4. Analyzing Historical Metrics for Forecasting: Set up the InfluxDB plugin to send historical metric data into InfluxDB and use it to drive forecasting models. By analyzing past performance metrics, you can create predictive models that forecast future trends and demands. This application is particularly useful for business intelligence purposes, helping organizations prepare for fluctuations in resource needs based on historical usage patterns.

Feedback

Thank you for being part of our community! If you have any general feedback or found any bugs on these pages, we welcome and encourage your input. Please submit your feedback in the InfluxDB community Slack.