Amazon CloudWatch Logs logging driver (original) (raw)
The awslogs
logging driver sends container logs toAmazon CloudWatch Logs. Log entries can be retrieved through the AWS Management Console or the AWS SDKs and Command Line Tools.
To use the awslogs
driver as the default logging driver, set the log-driver
and log-opt
keys to appropriate values in the daemon.json
file, which is located in /etc/docker/
on Linux hosts orC:\ProgramData\docker\config\daemon.json
on Windows Server. For more about configuring Docker using daemon.json
, seedaemon.json. The following example sets the log driver to awslogs
and sets theawslogs-region
option.
Restart Docker for the changes to take effect.
You can set the logging driver for a specific container by using the--log-driver
option to docker run
:
If you are using Docker Compose, set awslogs
using the following declaration example:
You can add logging options to the daemon.json
to set Docker-wide defaults, or use the --log-opt NAME=VALUE
flag to specify Amazon CloudWatch Logs logging driver options when starting a container.
awslogs-region
The awslogs
logging driver sends your Docker logs to a specific region. Use the awslogs-region
log option or the AWS_REGION
environment variable to set the region. By default, if your Docker daemon is running on an EC2 instance and no region is set, the driver uses the instance's region.
awslogs-endpoint
By default, Docker uses either the awslogs-region
log option or the detected region to construct the remote CloudWatch Logs API endpoint. Use the awslogs-endpoint
log option to override the default endpoint with the provided endpoint.
The
awslogs-region
log option or detected region controls the region used for signing. You may experience signature errors if the endpoint you've specified withawslogs-endpoint
uses a different region.
awslogs-group
You must specify alog groupfor the awslogs
logging driver. You can specify the log group with theawslogs-group
log option:
awslogs-stream
To configure whichlog streamshould be used, you can specify the awslogs-stream
log option. If not specified, the container ID is used as the log stream.
Log streams within a given log group should only be used by one container at a time. Using the same log stream for multiple containers concurrently can cause reduced logging performance.
awslogs-create-group
Log driver returns an error by default if the log group doesn't exist. However, you can set theawslogs-create-group
to true
to automatically create the log group as needed. The awslogs-create-group
option defaults to false
.
Your AWS IAM policy must include the
logs:CreateLogGroup
permission before you attempt to useawslogs-create-group
.
awslogs-create-stream
By default, the log driver creates the AWS CloudWatch Logs stream used for container log persistence.
Set awslogs-create-stream
to false
to disable log stream creation. When disabled, the Docker daemon assumes the log stream already exists. A use case where this is beneficial is when log stream creation is handled by another process avoiding redundant AWS CloudWatch Logs API calls.
If awslogs-create-stream
is set to false
and the log stream does not exist, log persistence to CloudWatch fails during container runtime, resulting in Failed to put log events
error messages in daemon logs.
awslogs-datetime-format
The awslogs-datetime-format
option defines a multi-line start pattern in Pythonstrftime format. A log message consists of a line that matches the pattern and any following lines that don't match the pattern. Thus the matched line is the delimiter between log messages.
One example of a use case for using this format is for parsing output such as a stack dump, which might otherwise be logged in multiple entries. The correct pattern allows it to be captured in a single entry.
This option always takes precedence if both awslogs-datetime-format
andawslogs-multiline-pattern
are configured.
Multi-line logging performs regular expression parsing and matching of all log messages, which may have a negative impact on logging performance.
Consider the following log stream, where new log messages start with a timestamp:
The format can be expressed as a strftime
expression of[%b %d, %Y %H:%M:%S]
, and the awslogs-datetime-format
value can be set to that expression:
This parses the logs into the following CloudWatch log events:
The following strftime
codes are supported:
Code | Meaning | Example |
---|---|---|
%a | Weekday abbreviated name. | Mon |
%A | Weekday full name. | Monday |
%w | Weekday as a decimal number where 0 is Sunday and 6 is Saturday. | 0 |
%d | Day of the month as a zero-padded decimal number. | 08 |
%b | Month abbreviated name. | Feb |
%B | Month full name. | February |
%m | Month as a zero-padded decimal number. | 02 |
%Y | Year with century as a decimal number. | 2008 |
%y | Year without century as a zero-padded decimal number. | 08 |
%H | Hour (24-hour clock) as a zero-padded decimal number. | 19 |
%I | Hour (12-hour clock) as a zero-padded decimal number. | 07 |
%p | AM or PM. | AM |
%M | Minute as a zero-padded decimal number. | 57 |
%S | Second as a zero-padded decimal number. | 04 |
%L | Milliseconds as a zero-padded decimal number. | .123 |
%f | Microseconds as a zero-padded decimal number. | 000345 |
%z | UTC offset in the form +HHMM or -HHMM. | +1300 |
%Z | Time zone name. | PST |
%j | Day of the year as a zero-padded decimal number. | 363 |
awslogs-multiline-pattern
The awslogs-multiline-pattern
option defines a multi-line start pattern using a regular expression. A log message consists of a line that matches the pattern and any following lines that don't match the pattern. Thus the matched line is the delimiter between log messages.
This option is ignored if awslogs-datetime-format
is also configured.
Multi-line logging performs regular expression parsing and matching of all log messages. This may have a negative impact on logging performance.
Consider the following log stream, where each log message should start with the pattern INFO
:
You can use the regular expression of ^INFO
:
This parses the logs into the following CloudWatch log events:
tag
Specify tag
as an alternative to the awslogs-stream
option. tag
interprets Go template markup, such as {{.ID}}
, {{.FullID}}
or {{.Name}}
docker.{{.ID}}
. See the tag option documentation for details on supported template substitutions.
When both awslogs-stream
and tag
are specified, the value supplied forawslogs-stream
overrides the template specified with tag
.
If not specified, the container ID is used as the log stream.
The CloudWatch log API doesn't support
:
in the log name. This can cause some issues when using the{{ .ImageName }}
as a tag, since a Docker image has a format ofIMAGE:TAG
, such asalpine:latest
. Template markup can be used to get the proper format. To get the image name and the first 12 characters of the container ID, you can use:the output is something like:
alpine_latest-bf0072049c76
awslogs-force-flush-interval-seconds
The awslogs
driver periodically flushes logs to CloudWatch.
The awslogs-force-flush-interval-seconds
option changes log flush interval seconds.
Default is 5 seconds.
awslogs-max-buffered-events
The awslogs
driver buffers logs.
The awslogs-max-buffered-events
option changes log buffer size.
Default is 4K.
You must provide AWS credentials to the Docker daemon to use the awslogs
logging driver. You can provide these credentials with the AWS_ACCESS_KEY_ID
,AWS_SECRET_ACCESS_KEY
, and AWS_SESSION_TOKEN
environment variables, the default AWS shared credentials file (~/.aws/credentials
of the root user), or if you are running the Docker daemon on an Amazon EC2 instance, the Amazon EC2 instance profile.
Credentials must have a policy applied that allows the logs:CreateLogStream
and logs:PutLogEvents
actions, as shown in the following example.