New Relic CloudWatch Logs ingestion

AWS Serverless application that sends log data from CloudWatch Logs to New Relic.

Requirements

To forward data to New Relic you need a New Relic License Key.

Install and configure

To install and configure the New Relic Cloudwatch Logs Lambda, see our documentation.

Additional notes:

• Some users in UTF-8 environments have reported difficulty with defining strings of NR_TAGS delimited by the semicolon ; character. If this applies to you, you can set an alternative delimiter character as the value of NR_ENV_DELIMITER, and separate your NR_TAGS with that.
• Custom Lambda and VPC log groups can be set using the NR_LAMBDA_LOG_GROUP_PREFIX and NR_VPC_LOG_GROUP_PREFIX environment variables.

Manual Deployment

If your organization restricts access to deploy via SAR, follow these steps below to deploy the log ingestion function manually.

SAM

1. Clone this repository: git clone https://github.com/newrelic/aws-log-ingestion.git
2. Install the SAM CLI Make sure you have >=1.105.0 installed, you can check with sam --version.
3. Retrieve your New Relic License Key
4. Build the SAM application (if on Linux -u can be omitted): sam build -u --parameter-overrides 'ParameterKey=NRLicenseKey,ParameterValue=your-license-key-here'
5. Deploy the SAM application: sam deploy --guided

Additional notes:

• To set LOGGING_ENABLED: sam build ... --parameter-overrides 'ParameterKey=NRLoggingEnabled,ParameterValue=True'

Serverless

1. Clone this repository: git clone https://github.com/newrelic/aws-log-ingestion.git
2. Install Serverless: npm install -g serverless
3. Install the serverless-python-requirements plugin: sls plugin install -n serverless-python-requirements
4. If not running Linux, install Docker
5. Retrieve your New Relic License Key
6. Set the LICENSE_KEY environment variable: export LICENSE_KEY=your-license-key-here
7. Deploy the function: sls deploy

Additional notes:

• To set LOGGING_ENABLED: export LOGGING_ENABLED=True (prior to deploy)

Terraform

In your Terraform, you can add this as a module, replacing {{YOUR_LICENSE_KEY}} with your New Relic License Key.

module "newrelic_log_ingestion" {
  source             = "github.com/newrelic/aws-log-ingestion"
  nr_license_key     = "{{YOUR_LICENSE_KEY}}"
}

By default, this will build and pack the lambda zip inside of the Terraform Module. You can supply your own by switching build_lambda = false, and specify the path to your lambda, using lambda_archive = "{{LAMBDA_PATH}}", replacing {{LAMBDA_PATH}} with the path to your lambda.

Infra Payload Format

The maximum payload size in bytes is:

aws-log-ingestion/src/function.py

Line 76 in 1430a24

MAX_PAYLOAD_SIZE = 1000 * 1024

If your payload exceeds this size, you will need to split it into pieces:

aws-log-ingestion/src/function.py

Lines 292 to 306 in 1430a24

	def _generate_payloads(data, split_function):
	"""
	Return a list of payloads to be sent to New Relic.
	This method usually returns a list of one element, but can be bigger if the
	payload size is too big
	"""
	payload = gzip.compress(json.dumps(data).encode())
	if len(payload) < MAX_PAYLOAD_SIZE:
	return [payload]
	split_data = split_function(data)
	return _generate_payloads(split_data[0], split_function) + _generate_payloads(
	split_data[1], split_function
	)

The payload should be utf-8 encoded and then gzipped before sending:

aws-log-ingestion/src/function.py

Line 298 in 1430a24

payload = gzip.compress(json.dumps(data).encode())

The following GNU coreutils Bash command will reproduce the desired payload encoding and compression:

xclip -sel clip -o | iconv -cf utf-8 | gzip > payload.gz

Required headers include:

• aws-log-ingestion/src/function.py

  Lines 360 to 361 in 1430a24

  	req.add_header("X-License-Key", _get_license_key(license_key))
  	req.add_header("Content-Encoding", "gzip")

• Accept-Encoding: gzip
• Content-Length: <calculated when request is sent>
• Host: <calculated when request is sent>

The payload should include the following (properly escaped) elements¹:

{
  "context": {
    "function_name": "newrelic-log-ingestion",
    "invoked_function_arn": "arn:aws:lambda:<your_aws_region>:<your_aws_account>:function:newrelic-log-ingestion",
    "log_group_name": "/aws/lambda/newrelic-log-ingestion",
    "log_stream_name": "<your_nli_log_stream_name>"
  },
  "entry": "{\"messageType\": \"DATA_MESSAGE\", \"owner\": \"<your_aws_account>\", \"logGroup\": \"/aws/lambda/<your_function_name>\", \"logStream\": \"<your_function_log_stream_name>\", \"subscriptionFilters\": [\"<your_function_name>\"], \"logEvents\": [{\"id\": \"36858672311120633630098786383886689203484013407063113737\", \"timestamp\": 1652800029012, \"message\": \"[1,\\\"NR_LAMBDA_MONITORING\\\",\\\"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\\\"]\\n\"}, {\"id\": \"36858672311232137356091439499594367794847255214593015820\", \"timestamp\": 1652800029017, \"message\": \"REPORT RequestId: 60d9a6a3-f31e-43e6-94a7-8485e06f8aa6\\tDuration: 13.98 ms\\tBilled Duration: 14 ms\\tMemory Size: 1024 MB\\tMax Memory Used: 87 MB\\tInit Duration: 584.39 ms\\t\\n\"}]}"
}

Footnotes

1. Replace <your_xyz> elements with your content, for example: "log_stream_name": "2022/05/17/[$LATEST]30dce751bc1a4e7497eb644171d70153". ↩