Explore related telemetry - Amazon CloudWatch
What is related telemetry?How to accessNavigating related telemetryUsing the topology mapFinding a specific resourcePrerequisites

Explore related telemetry

Computer systems can generate a large amount of telemetry, including both metrics and logs, and complex systems even more so. When looking at a specific set of telemetry, it can be a challenge to find other telemetry related to your initial set. It can take advanced training to gain the skills needed to find issues and troubleshoot them. Because systems are complex, understanding what is going on can involve viewing metrics and logs from many different services and resources, requiring context switching and navigating between systems.

The Amazon CloudWatch Explore related feature offers access to AWS resource relationships, related metrics, and logs across service consoles, enhancing observability and efficiency for operators of all skill levels. When viewing alarms or anomalies in CloudWatch dashboards, or metrics in AWS, users can quickly find and view metrics and logs for related resources in your system.

CloudWatch provides visibility into metrics and logs tied to specific resources, and the Explore related pane extends that by allowing you to correlate your infrastructure resources to your workloads with all of their associated telemetry. This gives you quick access to the information you need to troubleshoot infrastructure-related issues. You view the relationship between resources, and their related telemetry in the Explore related pane. The Explore related pane is accessed from CloudWatch or from other AWS consoles showing resources or telemetry.

Note

Explore related is currently limited in accounts set up as monitoring accounts in CloudWatch cross-account observability. You should access Explore related from the source accounts where the resources are originally created and managed. In source accounts, you can navigate between connected resources, and view related logs and metrics.

The following topics discuss the details of exploring related telemetry.

Topics

Related telemetry is metrics and log data from resources that are related to the current resource or service. Traditionally, you might look at the metrics and logs that are related to a single load balancer, or all telemetry related to Amazon EC2. The Explore related feature in Amazon CloudWatch adds an interactive topology map. The map is a resource-centric view where you can find metrics and logs for a specific resource, but you can also see how that resource is connected to other resources.

For example, if you are looking at the telemetry for a load balancer in the Explore related pane, besides the metrics and logs associated with that load balancer, the maps shows you the target groups for that load balancer. Selecting one of the target groups will then show you the Amazon EC2 instances associated with that target group. At each step in this process, the telemetry, including metrics and logs, for the selected resources are shown, making it easy to quickly find the telemetry you are looking for, or to explore the telemetry, looking for the cause of a specific issue.

Within the CloudWatch console, there are multiple ways to access telemetry related to your current view. For example, if you are looking at a graph on a dashboard, and you want to view telemetry related to that graph or an aspect of the graph, you can choose to explore related data directly from that graph. From many places in the console, you can choose an Explore related menu item, or select a compass icon ( ) to show the Explore related pane.

You can access the exploring experience from entry points throughout the CloudWatch console (and other AWS consoles), including:

  • Metrics navigation – When you choose Metrics then All metrics from the CloudWatch console left hand menu, the tile for any supported service or metric source will show the compass icon that brings up related telemetry in the bottom right corner.

  • Metric legend – When viewing any metric graph (in CloudWatch or other AWS consoles), hovering over the legend of the graph shows information about the data, as well as an Explore related button that brings up the related telemetry.

  • Metric datapoints – When viewing any metric graph, hovering over a datapoint in the graph shows information about the metric, as well as a compass icon, to bring up the related telemetry.

  • Metric search – When searching for metrics in CloudWatch, if you choose a found metric name, you can select Explore related from the menu that pops up, which will bring up the related telemetry.

  • Console toolbar – In many AWS console pages, the console toolbar (usually in the upper right of the console) includes a CloudWatch service icon, which will bring up CloudWatch tools, including the Explore related pane.

Depending on where you access the pane from, the default context of the pane will show an appropriate filter, if possible.

When you select any of the entry points to the Explore related pane, it appears on the right side of the CloudWatch console. This pane gives you access to view and find telemetry related to entities, in your system. An entity is a resource, such as an Amazon EC2 instance, or a service, such as an application that you have built. You can work within this pane without interrupting your current workflow, because it opens to the side of your initial page.

The following image shows the Explore related pane focused on a single Amazon EC2 instance, and the associated entities.

The Explore related pane, with a single Amazon EC2 instance in focus, and its associated entities.

The top of the Explore related pane is a visual topology map (map) of the current entity and other related entities. The currently selected entity sets the focus for the pane. There are two ways to select an entity.

  • Topology map – The map is a visual display of the current entity with focus. It also displays any related entities, allowing you to navigate around the set of resources and services that are related to each other.

  • Find other resources – You can use the Find other resources button to filter and search for entities to use as the focus.

The bottom part of the pane shows you an automated search of metrics and logs for the current focal entity.

By default, the focus is set to an entity matching the location from which you accessed the Explore related pane. For example, if you accessed it by clicking the compass icon associated with a metric from a specific Amazon EC2 instance, then the focus will be set to that Amazon EC2 instance.

When you select an AWS resource for the focus in the Explore related pane, you can navigate to the resource-specific console for the selected resource. For example, if you have selected an Amazon EC2 instance, you can select the View in EC2 console link to open the Amazon EC2 console with that instance selected.

When you set a focus, the metrics and logs are automatically filtered to show the telemetry related to your focus.

  • Metrics – Each metric is shown as a graph for the time period that you have chosen.

    Much like any dashboard graph in CloudWatch, you can hover over or select a graph to get more information about the metric graph, and to see options including viewing in CloudWatch metrics. Choosing to view in CloudWatch will open the metrics view with the same viewing context as the Explore related pane, including resource and time range.

  • Log patterns – CloudWatch analyzes the log groups associated with the focal resource and shows common patterns in those logs. For more information about log patterns, see Pattern analysis in the Amazon CloudWatch Logs User Guide.

    You can select Compare timerange to choose another time range and compare logs across the two time ranges.

    You can select View in Logs Insights to analyze the logs in CloudWatch Logs Insights with the same options as your current view, including resource, log group, and time range. For more information, see Analyzing log data with CloudWatch Logs Insights in the Amazon CloudWatch Logs User Guide.

  • Log groups – The log groups that contain the logs are shown.

    You can select the log groups and then perform one of the following actions:

    • Choose Start tailing in Live Tail to view a streaming list of new log events as they are ingested for the selected log groups. The Live Tail session is started in the CloudWatch console. For more information on Live Tail, see Troubleshoot with CloudWatch Logs LiveTail in the Amazon CloudWatch Logs User Guide.

    • Choose Query in Logs Insights to open Logs Insights with a query scoped to just those log groups, applying your current context, including resources and time range.

The topology map (map) is a visual display of the current focal entity and its related resources or services. You can use this interactive visualization to see the connections between different resources and services, and explore the relationships between components in your system. For example, if you are viewing load balancer resource, the map will show connected target group resources. Selecting a target group will display the associated instances. The visualization of connectivity helps operators understand and explore the relationships between different resources and services in your system.

You can drag the map, and zoom in and out, to see more of the associated entities, or to focus on fewer entities.

When you select an associated entity, like a target group, the pane's focus shifts to show telemetry for that entity. The map updates to center on the selected target group, displaying its connections to other entities, such as the load balancer and and any Amazon EC2 instances that are specified in that target group. As you navigate through different entities in the map, the metrics and logs at the bottom of the pane dynamically update, providing you with relevant telemetry for the newly selected resources.

If a resource doesn't appear on the topology map, you can use the Find other resources feature to locate it. You can filter resources by tag or type, then select the ones you are looking for. After you have found resources to focus on, you are returned to the topology map, with those resources selected, to browse associated entities and telemetry.

Note

There are many reasons why you might not see your resources on the topology map. For example:

  • It's not related to the current focal entity.

  • You don't have permissions to access associated entities or telemetry.

  • The resource or service may not support telemetry or associated entities.

By using Find other resources, you can discover and visualize resources that may not be directly connected or visible in the current map. This ensures that you can access and analyze all relevant components of your infrastructure.

Select a resource with Find resources.

  1. Open the Explore related pane from any of the entry points in the CloudWatch console.

  2. Choose Find resources.

  3. Choose the time frame for which you want to view logs or metrics.

  4. Choose Resource types, then select the type of the resource you want to focus on from the drop down list, for example, EC2 instances.

  5. Optionally, filter the set of resources by providing a tag to filter on. You can do this by selecting the Filter resources by tags filter, or by choosing the label that says 5 tags found (the number will depend on the tags in your system). This gives you a list of tags to choose from.

    After you have selected the tags, the list of resources is automatically filtered to only those that are associated with those tags.

  6. Optionally, choose one or more specific resources from the ones found that match your filters.

  7. Choose Show on map to return to the Topology map with your resources selected.

Your list of Metrics and Logs is now filtered to just logs and metrics that are associated with that resource type. You can choose the Metrics or Logs tab to view the kind of telemetry that you want to view.

To explore related telemetry, you must be getting entity information with the telemetry from your workloads, and you must have the proper permissions to view that data.

Many services send entity information automatically. For workloads that use the CloudWatch agent, you must have at least version 1.300049.1 of the agent, and you must configure it correctly. For information about configuring the agent, see How to add related information to custom telemetry sent to CloudWatch. For workloads running on Amazon EKS, you must have at least version v2.3.1-eksbuild.1 of the Amazon CloudWatch Observability EKS add-on. For more information about this add-on, see Install the Amazon CloudWatch Observability EKS add-on.

To explore related telemetry you must be signed in with certain permissions. Exploring related telemetry is a read-only activity, and requires at least read-only access to CloudWatch.

The permissions needed for viewing associations between telemetry and entities are: logs:ListLogGroupsForEntity, logs:ListEntitiesForLogGroup, cloudwatch:ListEntitiesForMetric, and application-signals:ListObservedEntities.

Each of the following AWS managed policies will provide the CloudWatch permissions needed to access related telemetry in the CloudWatch console:

Additionally, you must have at least read-only access (Describe* and Get*) to any resources in the topology map, in order for CloudWatch to discover and display relationships.

For more details about using policies to control access, see Managing access using policies.