Step 1: Send metric data to Lightstep Observability

You can send your AWS CloudWatch metrics into Lightstep Observability using a Terraform repository.

By default, Change Intelligence looks for the service.name attribute (tag/label) in your metric data to determine the sending service. If you want to change that or add others, you need to register them.

Lightstep also supports sending metrics from other sources.

Download and run the Terraform repository

1. Download and unzip the repository.

2. Thoroughly review the README and example.tfvars. They contain instructions and detailed information regarding all options. Basic installation instructions:

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    # You may also download and unzip via the command line.
    % wget https://github.com/lightstep/aws-cloudwatch-metric-stream-terraform/archive/main.zip
    % unzip main.zip
    % cd aws-cloudwatch-metric-stream-terraform-main
   
    # Configure your AWS credentials.
    % export AWS_ACCESS_KEY_ID=<access-key-id>
    % export AWS_SECRET_ACCESS_KEY=<secret-access-key>
   
    # Initialize your terraform backend.
    % terraform init
   
    # Apply terraform, entering your Lightstep Observability project access token when prompted.
    % terraform apply
    var.lightstep_access_token
      Lightstep Observability project access token
   
      Enter a value: <your-lightstep-access-token>
   
    # -----
    # The above is the minimal install with default values.
    # For custom install, copy example.tfvars (eg: `cp example.tfvars my-vars.tfvars`), edit the new file, then run:
    % terraform apply -var-file="my-vars.tfvars"  
   

3. The script outputs an Integration Role ARN and an External ID (a random string used to provide extra security). Copy these as you’ll need to paste them into the UI in the next step.

Add credentials to Lightstep Observability

To complete the integration, you need to add the AWS credential information to Lightstep Observability.

1. In Lightstep Observability, click Project settings in the left navigation menu.

2. On the Project Settings page, scroll down to Metric integrations.

3. Click Enable and enter the following AWS credential information in the dialog:
   • The Integration Role ARN

   • External ID

     These values are included in the output after running the Terraform script.

   

4. Click Enable.

   Your metric data is now enabled in Lightstep Observability. To verify metrics are reporting, search for the metrics in the Metric details section of the Project Settings page.

   It may take up to 30 minutes for metric data to appear in Lightstep Observability using the default configuration. This may vary if you set custom values for buffer_size and/or buffer_interval.

   It may take up to 30 minutes for changes to resource metadata to propagate to Lightstep Observability. For example, if you add a new custom tag to an EC2 instance, that tag may not appear in Lightstep Observability for up to 30 minutes.

What did we learn?

• You can use Terraform to send AWS CloudWatch metrics to Lightstep Observability.
• You can also send metrics from many other sources