Observability

We're constantly striving to make observability on FlexStack as easy as possible, whether you're using AWS CloudWatch or third-party tools.

Built-in observability tools

Every service you deploy with FlexStack is seamlessly integrated with AWS CloudWatch out-of-the-box.

How it works

When you deploy a Component to FlexStack, we automatically emit a Log Stream to a shared Log Group within your Environment. Sharing a log group between all of the services within an environment allows us to create a rich logging experience that allows you to seamlessly zoom in/out on events from your services.

Environment logs

Each environment has a top-level logs page that displays all of the events captured in each service. This view can be configured to display specific fields within structured logs. It also allows you to set specific time frames, as well as filter and fuzzy search events. Here you'll be able to see which component emitted an event, in addition to the specific ECS task.

Component logs

To view logs for a specific task or component, you can click on the component name or task ID in the log event. This will navigate you to the component's log page. pictured below.

Component metrics

In addition to logs, each service captures metrics specific to the service type. In the case of Web Services, you'll see metric chars for CPU and memory utilization, request count, and service latency. Metrics are viewable in the component dashboard.

Third-party integrations

Integrating your favorite observability, logging, and metrics platforms with FlexStack is as easy as adding magic secrets. Only one integration may be configured per component.

How it works

When you deploy a component, we search for variables with names specific to logging and metric platforms. If we detect a secret, we automatically configure your ECS tasks to send logs to these platforms instead of AWS CloudWatch.

Datadog

To add a Datadog integration, add the following secrets to your environment or individual components. Adding these secrets will automatically configure a Datadog agent to run in a sidecar container in your component task. You need to redeploy your component for the variable changes to take effect.

To get the most out of your Datadog integration, you can optionally add these additional variables:

Once the component has deployed with the integration, you'll start to receive service logs and metrics to your Datadog dashboard.

Better Stack

To set up a Better Stack integration, head over to the "Logs" tab in the Better Stack dashboard. Click "Connect Source", enter a "Name" and then select "Amazon ECS" in the "Platform" dropdown.

Click "Create Source". This will take you to a page with a "Basic information" section that includes a field called "Source token". Click on the source token to copy it to your clipboard.

Next, add the following secrets to your environment or individual components:

Finally, redeploy your component. This will cause logs to emit to Better Stack instead of AWS CloudWatch.

When it's finished deploying, you'll see logs show up in the "Live tail" tab of the Better Stack dashboard.

Axiom

To set up an Axiom integration, create a new Dataset in the Axiom dashboard. Name it whatever you'd like.

Next, click "Create a new token" at the top of the "Ingest method" section. Name it "FlexStack token". Click "Create" and copy the token to your clipboard.

Next, add the following secrets to your environment or individual components:

Finally, redeploy the component for the changes to take effect. This will cause logs to emit to Axiom instead of AWS CloudWatch.

Go to the "Streams" tab in the Axiom dashboard, click on your dataset name. Voila, you've got logs.

Mezmo (formerly LogDNA)

To set up a Mezmo integration, create a new Log Source. Copy the "Log ingestion key" at the top of the page.

Next, add the following secrets to your environment or individual components:

Finally, redeploy the component for the changes to take effect. This will cause logs to emit to Axiom instead of AWS CloudWatch.

Once the deployment has succeeded, head back to the Mezmo log viewer and you will see your component logs in the stream.