I have exported my CloudWatch logs from one AWS account to another, and they are currently stored in S3 in .gz format. I am trying to import these existing logs into a new CloudWatch log group that I've created. Since the application has been decommissioned, I don't want to stream the logs. I've heard that this can be done using AWS Lambda, but I couldn't find detailed steps or a reliable approach to achieve this. Is there a straightforward way to import the logs from S3 into my CloudWatch log group?
4 Answers
Honestly, I wouldn’t recommend doing this. It could get very expensive. If you only need to analyze the logs, it might be better to do it offline. A coworker of mine once racked up a $100k bill just from importing six months' worth of logs from a single log group.
It seems you’ve imported the logs from the old account into an S3 bucket in your new account and are looking to move them to CloudWatch. Using Kinesis Firehose could work, but it might be more complex. I’d suggest sticking with Lambda. The idea is for Lambda to fetch the logs from S3 and push them into your CloudWatch log group. You’ll need to set up a new Lambda function in Python and give it the right permissions for S3 and CloudWatch. Here's a basic outline for the Python code you'll need.
Absolutely, and be sure to handle errors during the data fetching and writing process so you don't miss any logs!
Most people usually export logs from CloudWatch to S3 since keeping logs in CloudWatch can get pricey if you need to retain them for a long time. Typically, we store logs for up to ten years but only keep three months worth in CloudWatch itself. For logs in S3, you can use Athena with Glue to analyze them instead of importing them back into CloudWatch. If you really want to import, you'll likely need to write some code to parse the S3 files and then make API calls to send the logs to CloudWatch, all while preserving the original timestamps.
Yes, getting those .gz logs from S3 into CloudWatch log groups can be done via AWS Lambda, but there's also a simpler command-line option if you're open to scripting. After you unzip the .gz files, you can use the `aws logs put-log-events` command in a script to read through each log line and import it into CloudWatch. If coding isn't your thing, you might find some built-in tools in the AWS Management Console that could help you with this process.
Definitely! Just remember to break the log events into batches before sending them to CloudWatch. You can set up the Lambda to read .gz files, decompress them, and iterate through each line. You might also want to adjust the timestamps during the import to reflect the original times.