Score:2

How to view and interact with terminal logs generated by AWS ECS

cn flag

How do people view and interact with terminal logs generated by AWS ECS?

I've been using the ECS task view so far, but I feel the UX is bad and the Cloudwatch UI has similar problems.

How do others read and interact with their logs?

Tim avatar
gp flag
Tim
I'm not sure what you mean. Typically you push logs to cloudwatch logs.
cn flag
I'm having a hard time interacting with these logs in cloudwatch insights. Like, if I do a filter to find a message, it's then difficult to jump to that specific log file to read neighboring logs. Or if I want to extra fields from my logs, such as thread name, then i have to add that to the query builder every time. I'm running a java server, but i dont know if there are better configuration options that I'm just not aware of that add more value or ease of use to my CloudWatch experience.
cn flag
Another example, paginating logs is difficult as this requires changing the pagination query, not a simple 'next button'
Tim avatar
gp flag
Tim
Cloudwatch log insights isn't always the easiest tool to use. It is possible to download entire log streams and view them locally on your computer, but I don't have the command available right now. Google will find it. It is also possible to have external tools pull logs from cloud watch logs that have a nicer interface.
cn flag
Whats your personal preference? Do you use an external tool or view these locally? I could see locally getting cumbersome when looking at lots of logs over a few days
Tim avatar
gp flag
Tim
I use CW Logs / Insights personally but it's pretty clunky and I need something better, but I work on many customer accounts which makes it more difficult. I know a managed services team that uses data dog, but haven't used it myself
Score:0
cn flag

You could look into using AWS OpenSearch (aka ElasticSearch), and adding the beats agents to your containers. That would let you use Kibana for browsing the logs, which is generally a popular tool.

This does come at extra cost! If you are dead against using CloudWatch then setting up a centralized logging account in your AWS org and sharing the cost of an OpenSearch cluster is probably the next best option.

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