Example Amazon ECS task definition: Route logs to CloudWatch

Before your containers can send logs to CloudWatch, you must specify the awslogs log driver for containers in your task definition. For more information about the log parameters, see Storage and logging

The task definition JSON that follows has a logConfiguration object specified for each container. One is for the WordPress container that sends logs to a log group called awslogs-wordpress. The other is for a MySQL container that sends logs to a log group that's called awslogs-mysql. Both containers use the awslogs-example log stream prefix.

{
    "containerDefinitions": [
        {
            "name": "wordpress",
            "links": [
                "mysql"
            ],
            "image": "wordpress",
            "essential": true,
            "portMappings": [
                {
                    "containerPort": 80,
                    "hostPort": 80
                }
            ],
            "logConfiguration": {
                "logDriver": "awslogs",
                "options": {
                    "awslogs-create-group": "true",
                    "awslogs-group": "awslogs-wordpress",
                    "awslogs-region": "us-west-2",
                    "awslogs-stream-prefix": "awslogs-example"
                }
            },
            "memory": 500,
            "cpu": 10
        },
        {
            "environment": [
                {
                    "name": "MYSQL_ROOT_PASSWORD",
                    "value": "password"
                }
            ],
            "name": "mysql",
            "image": "mysql",
            "cpu": 10,
            "memory": 500,
            "essential": true,
            "logConfiguration": {
                "logDriver": "awslogs",
                "options": {
                    "awslogs-create-group": "true",
                    "awslogs-group": "awslogs-mysql",
                    "awslogs-region": "us-west-2",
                    "awslogs-stream-prefix": "awslogs-example",
                    "mode": "non-blocking", 
                    "max-buffer-size": "25m" 
                }
            }
        }
    ],
    "family": "awslogs-example"
}

After you have registered a task definition with the awslogs log driver in a container definition log configuration, you can run a task or create a service with that task definition to start sending logs to CloudWatch Logs. For more information, see Running an application as an Amazon ECS task and Creating an Amazon ECS service using the console.