AWS Data Firehose and Splunk Integration

Input and output integration overview

This plugin listens for metrics sent via HTTP from AWS Data Firehose in supported data formats, providing real-time data ingestion capabilities.

This output plugin facilitates direct streaming of Telegraf collected metrics into Splunk via the HTTP Event Collector, enabling easy integration with Splunk’s powerful analytics platform.

Integration details

AWS Data Firehose

The AWS Data Firehose Telegraf plugin is designed to receive metrics from AWS Data Firehose via HTTP. This plugin listens for incoming data in various formats and processes it according to the request-response schema outlined in the official AWS documentation. Unlike standard input plugins that operate on a fixed interval, this service plugin initializes a listener that remains active, waiting for incoming metrics. This allows for real-time data ingestion from AWS Data Firehose, making it suitable for scenarios where immediate data processing is required. Key features include the ability to specify service addresses, paths, and support for TLS connections for secure data transmission. Additionally, the plugin accommodates optional authentication keys and custom tags, enhancing its flexibility in various use cases involving data streaming and processing.

Splunk

Use Telegraf to easily collect and aggregate metrics from many different sources and send them to Splunk. Utilizing the HTTP output plugin combined with the specialized Splunk metrics serializer, this configuration ensures efficient data ingestion into Splunk’s metrics indexes. The HEC is an advanced mechanism provided by Splunk designed to reliably collect data at scale via HTTP or HTTPS, providing critical capabilities for security, monitoring, and analytics workloads. Telegraf’s integration with Splunk HEC streamlines operations by leveraging standard HTTP protocols, built-in authentication, and structured data serialization, optimizing metrics ingestion and enabling immediate actionable insights.

Configuration

AWS Data Firehose

[[inputs.firehose]]
  ## Address and port to host HTTP listener on
  service_address = ":8080"

  ## Paths to listen to.
  # paths = ["/telegraf"]

  ## maximum duration before timing out read of the request
  # read_timeout = "5s"
  ## maximum duration before timing out write of the response
  # write_timeout = "5s"

  ## Set one or more allowed client CA certificate file names to
  ## enable mutually authenticated TLS connections
  # tls_allowed_cacerts = ["/etc/telegraf/clientca.pem"]

  ## Add service certificate and key
  # tls_cert = "/etc/telegraf/cert.pem"
  # tls_key = "/etc/telegraf/key.pem"

  ## Minimal TLS version accepted by the server
  # tls_min_version = "TLS12"

  ## Optional access key to accept for authentication.
  ## AWS Data Firehose uses "x-amz-firehose-access-key" header to set the access key.
  ## If no access_key is provided (default), authentication is completely disabled and
  ## this plugin will accept all request ignoring the provided access-key in the request!
  # access_key = "foobar"

  ## Optional setting to add parameters as tags
  ## If the http header "x-amz-firehose-common-attributes" is not present on the
  ## request, no corresponding tag will be added. The header value should be a
  ## json and should follow the schema as describe in the official documentation:
  ## https://docs.aws.amazon.com/firehose/latest/dev/httpdeliveryrequestresponse.html#requestformat
  # parameter_tags = ["env"]

  ## Data format to consume.
  ## Each data format has its own unique set of configuration options, read
  ## more about them here:
  ## https://github.com/influxdata/telegraf/blob/master/docs/DATA_FORMATS_INPUT.md
  # data_format = "influx"

Splunk

[[outputs.http]]
  ## Splunk HTTP Event Collector endpoint
  url = "https://splunk.example.com:8088/services/collector"

  ## HTTP method to use
  method = "POST"

  ## Splunk authentication token
  headers = {"Authorization" = "Splunk YOUR_SPLUNK_HEC_TOKEN"}

  ## Serializer for formatting metrics specifically for Splunk
  data_format = "splunkmetric"

  ## Optional parameters
  # timeout = "5s"
  # insecure_skip_verify = false
  # tls_ca = "/path/to/ca.pem"
  # tls_cert = "/path/to/cert.pem"
  # tls_key = "/path/to/key.pem"

Input and output integration examples

AWS Data Firehose

1. Real-Time Data Analytics: Using the AWS Data Firehose plugin, organizations can stream data in real-time from various sources, such as application logs or IoT devices, directly into analytics platforms. This allows data teams to analyze incoming data as it is generated, enabling rapid insights and operational adjustments based on fresh metrics.

2. Profile Access Patterns for Optimization: By collecting data about how clients interact with applications through AWS Data Firehose, businesses can gain valuable insights into user behavior. This can drive content personalization strategies or optimize server architecture for better performance based on traffic patterns.

3. Automated Alerting Mechanism: Integrating AWS Data Firehose with alerting systems via this plugin allows teams to set up automated alerts based on specific metrics collected. For example, if a particular threshold is reached in the input data, alerts can trigger operations teams to investigate potential issues before they escalate.

Splunk

1. Real-Time Security Analytics: Utilize this plugin to stream security-related metrics from various applications into Splunk in real-time. Organizations can detect threats instantly by correlating data streams across systems, significantly reducing detection and response times.

2. Multi-Cloud Infrastructure Monitoring: Integrate Telegraf to consolidate metrics from multi-cloud environments directly into Splunk, enabling comprehensive visibility and operational intelligence. This unified monitoring allows teams to detect performance issues quickly and streamline cloud resource management.

3. Dynamic Capacity Planning: Deploy the plugin to continuously push resource metrics from container orchestration platforms (like Kubernetes) into Splunk. Leveraging Splunk’s analytics capabilities, teams can automate predictive scaling and resource allocation, avoiding resource bottlenecks and minimizing costs.

4. Automated Incident Response Workflows: Combine this plugin with Splunk’s alerting system to create automated incident response workflows. Metrics collected by Telegraf trigger real-time alerts and automated remediation scripts, ensuring rapid resolution and maintaining high system availability.

Feedback

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