Monitoring AWS EC2 instances, Azure VMs, and GCP Compute Engine instances can be done with LogicMonitor’s Cloud Collector that pulls metrics from CloudWatch, Azure Monitor, and Stackdriver API respectively. However, to collect the operating system and application metrics, a local collector is also required.

Prerequisites

• You can install a LogicMonitor Collector within your AWS, Azure, or GCP environment to collect non-AWS, Azure, or GCP API data, such as operating systems and application-level metrics. For more information on installing a LogicMonitor collector, see Installing Collectors.

Once you have installed the LogicMonitor Collector, you can access the LogicMonitor’s LogicModule library for your cloud resources, including DataSources, EventSources, PropertySources, etc. The specific data for CloudWatch, Azure Monitor, and Stackdriver will continue to be collected via LogicMonitor Collector.

You can view the data collected by the LogicMonitor Collector alongside the CloudWatch, Azure Monitor, and GCP Stackdriver data.

How to enable monitoring

To enable monitoring via a local collector, complete the following steps:

1. Navigate to Resources and click Manage for your AWS / Azure / GCP account.

2. On the top-right corner, click Manage.

3. On the Cloud Integrations page, click the Services tab.

4. Select the required services from the list and click the Settings Gear icon.

5. On the Settings page, click the Collector Assignments tab.

6. Toggle the Enable Monitoring via local Collector option to enable the monitoring.

7. In the Collector Assignments section, on the top-right corner, click the + icon, to add the collector.

The collector assignments will map Collectors to the EC2 instances, VMs, or Compute Engine instances they should monitor. You can assign Collectors based on EC2, VM, or Compute Engine properties like AWS region or VPC, Azure subnet, or a custom tag. You may also want to add a condition to exclude stopped instances from getting a collector assignment to avoid receiving alerts for DataSources like Ping – you can add ‘&& system.aws.stateName != “stopped”’ to an existing query.

8. (Optional) You can click the Discovery Settings tab and toggle the Use custom NetScan Frequency option to enable more frequent discovery for the EC2 / VM / Compute Engine service.  Enabling this option will allow you to configure LogicMonitor to check for new EC2 / VM / Compute Engine instances up to every 10 minutes (more frequent than the default frequency for all services, which has a minimum of 1 hour).  This frequency will only apply to the EC2 / VM / Compute Engine service.

9. Save your changes.

After saving, the system.sysinfo property will be automatically populated for the EC2 instances / VMs / Compute Engine instances to which you assigned a Collector, and LogicMonitor DataSources will apply accordingly.  The assigned Collectors will run Active Discovery for these DataSources, and you should see instances and data shortly thereafter:

Frequently Asked Questions

What happens if I disable the monitoring via a local Collector?

If you disable monitoring via local Collector after it has already been enabled, any data collected by the local Collector will be deleted. CloudWatch/Azure Monitor/Stackdriver metric collection will continue being collected by a LogicMonitor maintained Collector.

What happens if my EC2 instances have two IP addresses?

LogicMonitor will use the first private IP address listed. You can override this assignment by setting a resource property cloud.primaryIP with the IP address you want LogicMonitor to collect data from.

What happens if an EC2 instance matches two Collector assignments?

The last assignment will take priority.

What happens if I unselect a region for monitoring the EC2 service?

If you configure the EC2 instances that no longer match to be deleted, they will be deleted according to schedule.  

If you do not configure the EC2 instances to be deleted, but the instances no longer match the criteria in the EC2 service settings, CloudWatch data collection will stop and local Collector-based data collection will continue (assuming a local Collector was assigned and that the ‘enable monitoring via local Collector’ option is still enabled).

Will I be billed twice if I enable local collector monitoring for a cloud device?

No. When local collector monitoring is enabled for a device, the device is no longer counted as a cloud device and will not be billed as one. (You will not be billed twice for the device, because it will only count as a regular device.)