AWS service logs can be collected with the Datadog Forwarder Lambda function. This Lambda—which triggers on S3 Buckets, CloudWatch log groups, and EventBridge events—forwards logs to Datadog.

To start collecting logs from your AWS services:

1. Set up the Datadog Forwarder Lambda function in your AWS account.
2. Enable logging for your AWS service (most AWS services can log to a S3 bucket or CloudWatch Log Group).
3. Set up the triggers that cause the Forwarder Lambda to execute when there are new logs to be forwarded. There are two ways to configure the triggers.

Note: If you are in the AWS us-east-1 region, leverage Datadog-AWS Private Link.

Note: Cloudformation creates an IAM policy which includes KMS:Decrypt for all resources, and does not align with AWS Security Hub’s best practice. This permission is used is to decrypt objects from KMS-encrypted S3 buckets to set up Lambda function, and which KMS key is used to encrypt the S3 buckets cannot be predicted. You can safely delete this permission after the installation successfully finished.

Enable logging for your AWS service

Any AWS service that generates logs into a S3 bucket or a CloudWatch Log Group is supported. Find setup instructions for the most used services in the table below:

Set up triggers

There are two options when configuring triggers on the Datadog Forwarder Lambda function:

• Automatically: Datadog automatically retrieves the log locations for the selected AWS services and adds them as triggers on the Datadog Forwarder Lambda function. Datadog also keeps the list up to date.
• Manually: Set up each trigger yourself.

Automatically set up triggers

Datadog can automatically configure triggers on the Datadog Forwarder Lambda function to collect AWS logs from the following sources and locations:

Note: Subscription filters are not created automatically by the DatadogForwarder. Create them directly on a Log Group.

1. If you haven’t already, set up the Datadog log collection AWS Lambda function.

2. Ensure the policy of the IAM role used for Datadog-AWS integration has the following permissions. Information on how these permissions are used can be found in the descriptions below:

   "cloudfront:GetDistributionConfig",
   "cloudfront:ListDistributions",
   "elasticloadbalancing:DescribeLoadBalancers",
   "elasticloadbalancing:DescribeLoadBalancerAttributes",
   "lambda:InvokeFunction",
   "lambda:List*",
   "lambda:GetPolicy",
   "redshift:DescribeClusters",
   "redshift:DescribeLoggingStatus",
   "s3:GetBucketLogging",
   "s3:GetBucketLocation",
   "s3:GetBucketNotification",
   "s3:ListAllMyBuckets",
   "s3:PutBucketNotification",
   "states:ListStateMachines",
   "states:DescribeStateMachine",
   "wafv2:ListLoggingConfigurations",
   "logs:PutSubscriptionFilter",
   "logs:DeleteSubscriptionFilter",
   "logs:DescribeSubscriptionFilters"
   

   AWS Permission	Description
   cloudfront:GetDistributionConfig	Get the name of the S3 bucket containing CloudFront access logs.
   cloudfront:ListDistributions	List all CloudFront distributions.
   elasticloadbalancing: DescribeLoadBalancers	List all load balancers.
   elasticloadbalancing: DescribeLoadBalancerAttributes	Get the name of the S3 bucket containing ELB access logs.
   lambda:InvokeFunction	Invoke a Lambda function.
   lambda:List*	List all Lambda functions.
   lambda:GetPolicy	Gets the Lambda policy when triggers are to be removed.
   redshift:DescribeClusters	List all Redshift clusters.
   redshift:DescribeLoggingStatus	Get the name of the S3 bucket containing Redshift Logs.
   s3:GetBucketLogging	Get the name of the S3 bucket containing S3 access logs.
   s3:GetBucketLocation	Get the region of the S3 bucket containing S3 access logs.
   s3:GetBucketNotification	Get existing Lambda trigger configurations.
   s3:ListAllMyBuckets	List all S3 buckets.
   s3:PutBucketNotification	Add or remove a Lambda trigger based on S3 bucket events.
   states:ListStateMachines	List all Step Functions.
   states:DescribeStateMachine	Get logging details about a Step Function.
   wafv2:ListLoggingConfigurations	Lists all logging configurations of the Web Application Firewall.
   logs:PutSubscriptionFilter	Add a Lambda trigger based on CloudWatch Log events
   logs:DeleteSubscriptionFilter	Remove a Lambda trigger based on CloudWatch Log events
   logs:DescribeSubscriptionFilters	Lists the subscription filters for the specified log group.

3. In the AWS Integration page, select the AWS Account to collect logs from and click on the Log Collection tab.
   

4. Enter the ARN of the Lambda created in the previous section and click Add.

5. Select the services from which you’d like to collect logs and click Save. To stop collecting logs from a particular service, deselect the log source.

6. If you have logs across multiple regions, you must create additional Lambda functions in those regions and enter them in this page.

7. To stop collecting all AWS logs, hover over a Lambda and click the Delete icon. All triggers for that function are removed.

8. Within a few minutes of this initial setup, your AWS Logs appear in the Datadog Log Explorer.

Manually set up triggers

Collecting logs from CloudWatch log group

If you are collecting logs from a CloudWatch log group, configure the trigger to the Datadog Forwarder Lambda function using one of the following methods:

resource "aws_cloudwatch_log_subscription_filter" "datadog_log_subscription_filter" {
  name            = "datadog_log_subscription_filter"
  log_group_name  = <CLOUDWATCH_LOG_GROUP_NAME> # for example, /aws/lambda/my_lambda_name
  destination_arn = <DATADOG_FORWARDER_ARN> # for example,  arn:aws:lambda:us-east-1:123:function:datadog-forwarder
  filter_pattern  = ""
}

Resources:
  MyLogSubscriptionFilter:
    Type: "AWS::Logs::SubscriptionFilter"
    Properties:
      DestinationArn: "<DATADOG_FORWARDER_ARN>"
      LogGroupName: "<CLOUDWATCH_LOG_GROUP_NAME>"
      FilterPattern: ""

Collecting logs from S3 buckets

If you are collecting logs from an S3 bucket, configure the trigger to the Datadog Forwarder Lambda function using one of the following methods:

resource "aws_s3_bucket_notification" "my_bucket_notification" {
  bucket = my_bucket
  lambda_function {
    lambda_function_arn = "<DATADOG_FORWARDER_ARN>"
    events              = ["s3:ObjectCreated:*"]
    filter_prefix       = "AWSLogs/"
    filter_suffix       = ".log"
  }
}

Resources:
  Bucket:
    Type: AWS::S3::Bucket
    Properties:
      BucketName: "<MY_BUCKET>"
      NotificationConfiguration:
        LambdaConfigurations:
        - Event: 's3:ObjectCreated:*'
          Function: "<DATADOG_FORWARDER_ARN>"

Scrubbing and filtering

You can scrub emails or IP address from logs sent by the Lambda function, or define a custom scrubbing rule in the Lambda parameters. You can also exclude or send only those logs that match a specific pattern by using the filtering option.

Further reading

Additional helpful documentation, links, and articles:

Learn how to explore your logsDOCUMENTATION Perform Log AnalyticsDOCUMENTATION Learn how to process your logsDOCUMENTATION How to send logs to Datadog while reducing data transfer feesGUIDE