Send AWS Services Logs With The Datadog Lambda Function

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:

AWS serviceActivate AWS service loggingSend AWS logs to Datadog
API GatewayEnable Amazon API Gateway logsManual and automatic log collection.
CloudfrontEnable Amazon CloudFront logsManual and automatic log collection.
CloudTrailEnable AWS CloudTrail logsManual log collection. See AWS Configuration for Cloud SIEM if you are setting up AWS CloudTrail for Cloud SIEM.
DynamoDBEnable Amazon DynamoDB logsManual log collection.
EC2-Use the Datadog Agent to send your logs to Datadog.
ECS-Use the docker agent to gather your logs.
Elastic Load Balancing (ELB)Enable Amazon ELB logsManual and automatic log collection.
Lambda-Manual and automatic log collection.
RDSEnable Amazon RDS logsManual log. collection.
Route 53Enable Amazon Route 53 logsManual log collection.
S3Enable Amazon S3 logsManual and automatic log collection.
SNSSNS does not provide logs, but you can process logs and events that are transiting through to the SNS Service.Manual log collection.
RedShiftEnable Amazon Redshift logsManual and automatic log collection.
Verified AccessEnable Verified Access logsManual log collection.
VPCEnable Amazon VPC logsManual log collection.
Step FunctionsEnable Amazon Step Functions logsManual log collection.
Web Application FirewallEnable Amazon WAF logsManual and automatic log collection.
MWAAEnable Amazon MWAA logsManual log collection.

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:

SourceLocation
API Gateway Access LogsCloudWatch
API Gateway Execution LogsCloudWatch
Application ELB Access LogsS3
Classic ELB Access LogsS3
CloudFront Access LogsS3
Lambda LogsCloudWatch
Redshift LogsS3
S3 Access LogsS3
Step FunctionsCloudWatch
Web Application FirewallS3, CloudWatch

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: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 PermissionDescription
    cloudfront:GetDistributionConfigGet the name of the S3 bucket containing CloudFront access logs.
    cloudfront:ListDistributionsList all CloudFront distributions.
    elasticloadbalancing:
    DescribeLoadBalancers
    List all load balancers.
    elasticloadbalancing:
    DescribeLoadBalancerAttributes
    Get the name of the S3 bucket containing ELB access logs.
    lambda:List*List all Lambda functions.
    lambda:GetPolicyGets the Lambda policy when triggers are to be removed.
    redshift:DescribeClustersList all Redshift clusters.
    redshift:DescribeLoggingStatusGet the name of the S3 bucket containing Redshift Logs.
    s3:GetBucketLoggingGet the name of the S3 bucket containing S3 access logs.
    s3:GetBucketLocationGet the region of the S3 bucket containing S3 access logs.
    s3:GetBucketNotificationGet existing Lambda trigger configurations.
    s3:ListAllMyBucketsList all S3 buckets.
    s3:PutBucketNotificationAdd or remove a Lambda trigger based on S3 bucket events.
    states:ListStateMachinesList all Step Functions.
    states:DescribeStateMachineGet logging details about a Step Function.
    wafv2:ListLoggingConfigurationsLists all logging configurations of the Web Application Firewall.
    logs:PutSubscriptionFilterAdd a Lambda trigger based on CloudWatch Log events
    logs:DeleteSubscriptionFilterRemove a Lambda trigger based on CloudWatch Log events
    logs:DescribeSubscriptionFiltersLists 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.

    The Log Collection tab of the AWS integration page for a specific AWS account with instructions to send AWS Services logs and a textbox to autosubscribe the Forwarder Lambda function by entering the ARN of the Forwarder Lambda function

  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.

    The Log Collection tab of the AWS integration page for a specific AWS account with one Lambda function successfully entered under Included ARNs and some of the services enabled under Log Sources

  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:

  1. In the AWS console, go to Lambda.
  2. Click Functions and select the Datadog Forwarder.
  3. Click Add trigger and select CloudWatch Logs.
  4. Select the log group from the dropdown menu.
  5. Enter a name for your filter, and optionally specify a filter pattern.
  6. Click Add.
  7. Go to the Datadog Log section to explore any new log events sent to your log group.

For Terraform users, you can provision and manage your triggers using the aws_cloudwatch_log_subscription_filter resource. See sample code below.

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  = ""
}

For AWS CloudFormation users, you can provision and manage your triggers using the CloudFormation AWS::Logs::SubscriptionFilter resource. See sample code below.

The sample code also work for AWS SAM and Serverless Framework. For Serverless Framework, put the code under the resources section within your serverless.yml.

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:

  1. Once the Lambda function is installed, manually add a trigger on the S3 bucket that contains your logs in the AWS console:

    Adding trigger
  2. Select the bucket and then follow the AWS instructions:

    Integration Lambda
  3. Set the correct event type on S3 buckets:

    Object Created

Once done, go into your Datadog Log section to start exploring your logs!

For Terraform users, you can provision and manage your triggers using the aws_s3_bucket_notification resource. See the sample code below.

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"
  }
}

For CloudFormation users, you can configure triggers using the CloudFormation NotificationConfiguration for your S3 bucket. See the sample code below.

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