Sending SSM Agent logs to CloudWatch Logs

AWS Systems Manager Agent (SSM Agent) is Amazon software that runs on your EC2 instances, edge devices, on-premises servers, and virtual machines (VMs) that are configured for Systems Manager. SSM Agent processes requests from the Systems Manager service in the cloud and configures your machine as specified in the request. For more information about SSM Agent, see Working with SSM Agent.

In addition, using the following steps, you can configure SSM Agent to send log data to Amazon CloudWatch Logs.

Before you begin

Create a log group in CloudWatch Logs. For more information, see Getting started with CloudWatch Logs in the Amazon CloudWatch Logs User Guide.

To configure SSM Agent to send logs to CloudWatch

1. Log into a node and locate the following file:

   Linux

   On most Linux node types: /etc/amazon/ssm/seelog.xml.template.

   On Ubuntu Server 20.10 STR & 20.04, 18.04, and 16.04 LTS: /snap/amazon-ssm-agent/current/seelog.xml.template

   macOS

   /opt/aws/ssm/seelog.xml.template

   Windows

   %ProgramFiles%\Amazon\SSM\seelog.xml.template

2. Change the file name from seelog.xml.template to seelog.xml

   Note

   On Ubuntu Server 20.10 STR & 20.04, 18.04, and 16.04 LTS, the file seelog.xml must be created in the directory /etc/amazon/ssm/. You can create this directory and file by running the following commands.

   sudo mkdir -p /etc/amazon/ssm

   sudo cp -pr /snap/amazon-ssm-agent/current/* /etc/amazon/ssm

   sudo cp -p /etc/amazon/ssm/seelog.xml.template /etc/amazon/ssm/seelog.xml

3. Open the seelog.xml file in a text editor, and locate the following section.

   Linux and macOS

   <outputs formatid="fmtinfo">
      <console formatid="fmtinfo"/>
      <rollingfile type="size" filename="/var/log/amazon/ssm/amazon-ssm-agent.log" maxsize="30000000" maxrolls="5"/>
      <filter levels="error,critical" formatid="fmterror">
         <rollingfile type="size" filename="/var/log/amazon/ssm/errors.log" maxsize="10000000" maxrolls="5"/>
      </filter>
   </outputs>

   Windows

   <outputs formatid="fmtinfo">
      <console formatid="fmtinfo"/>
      <rollingfile type="size" maxrolls="5" maxsize="30000000" filename="{{LOCALAPPDATA}}\Amazon\SSM\Logs\amazon-ssm-agent.log"/>
      <filter formatid="fmterror" levels="error,critical">
         <rollingfile type="size" maxrolls="5" maxsize="10000000" filename="{{LOCALAPPDATA}}\Amazon\SSM\Logs\errors.log"/>
      </filter>
   </outputs>

4. Edit the file, and add a custom name element after the closing </filter> tag. In the following example, the custom name as been specified as cloudwatch_receiver.

   Linux and macOS

   <outputs formatid="fmtinfo">
      <console formatid="fmtinfo"/>
      <rollingfile type="size" filename="/var/log/amazon/ssm/amazon-ssm-agent.log" maxsize="30000000" maxrolls="5"/>
      <filter levels="error,critical" formatid="fmterror">
         <rollingfile type="size" filename="/var/log/amazon/ssm/errors.log" maxsize="10000000" maxrolls="5"/>
      </filter>
      <custom name="cloudwatch_receiver" formatid="fmtdebug" data-log-group="your-CloudWatch-log-group-name"/>
   </outputs>

   Windows

   <outputs formatid="fmtinfo">
      <console formatid="fmtinfo"/>
      <rollingfile type="size" maxrolls="5" maxsize="30000000" filename="{{LOCALAPPDATA}}\Amazon\SSM\Logs\amazon-ssm-agent.log"/>
      <filter formatid="fmterror" levels="error,critical">
         <rollingfile type="size" maxrolls="5" maxsize="10000000" filename="{{LOCALAPPDATA}}\Amazon\SSM\Logs\errors.log"/>
      </filter>
      <custom name="cloudwatch_receiver" formatid="fmtdebug" data-log-group="your-CloudWatch-log-group-name"/>
   </outputs>

5. Save your changes, and then restart SSM Agent or the node.

6. Open the CloudWatch console at https://console.aws.amazon.com/cloudwatch/.

7. In the navigation pane, choose Log groups, and then choose the name of your log group.

   Tip

   The log stream for SSM Agent log file data is organized by node ID.