Use the previous CloudWatch Logs agent to get started with CloudWatch Logs

Using the CloudWatch Logs agent, you can publish log data from Amazon EC2 instances running Linux or Windows Server, and logged events from AWS CloudTrail. We recommend instead using the CloudWatch unified agent to publish your log data. For more information about the new agent, see Collect Metrics and Logs from Amazon EC2 Instances and On-Premises Servers with the CloudWatch Agent in the Amazon CloudWatch User Guide. Alternatively, you can continue using the previous CloudWatch Logs agent.

Contents

• CloudWatch Logs agent prerequisites
• Quick Start: Install the agent on a running EC2 Linux instance
• Quick Start: Install the agent on an EC2 Linux instance at launch
• Quick Start: Use CloudWatch Logs with Windows Server 2016 instances
• Quick Start: Use CloudWatch Logs with Windows Server 2012 and Windows Server 2008 instances
• Quick Start: Install the agent using AWS OpsWorks
• Report the CloudWatch Logs agent status
• Start the CloudWatch Logs agent
• Stop the CloudWatch Logs agent

CloudWatch Logs agent prerequisites

The CloudWatch Logs agent requires Python version 2.7, 3.0, or 3.3, and any of the following versions of Linux:

• Amazon Linux version 2014.03.02 or later. Amazon Linux 2 is not supported

• Ubuntu Server version 12.04, 14.04, or 16.04

• CentOS version 6, 6.3, 6.4, 6.5, or 7.0

• Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) version 6.5 or 7.0

• Debian 8.0