Aggregated Exports

You can create an aggregated export sink that can export log entries from all the projects, folders, and billing accounts of a Google Cloud Platform organization. For instance, you might aggregate and export audit log entries from an organization's projects to a central location.

Caution: Your aggregated export sink might export a very large number of log entries. To avoid exporting too many log entries, design your aggregated export sink filter carefully, as described on this page. For details on potential costs, review Stackdriver pricing.

Concept

Without the aggregated export feature, an export sink is limited to exporting log entries from the exact resource in which the sink was created: a GCP project, organization, folder, or billing account.

To use the aggregated export feature, create a sink in a GCP organization or folder and set the sink's includeChildren parameter to True. That sink can then export log entries from the organization or folder, plus (recursively) from any contained folders, billing accounts, or projects. You can use the sink's filter to specify log entries from projects, resource types, or named logs.

For information about export sinks and how to create them, go to Exporting logs in the API and using the command-line tool to create sinks.

Creating the export destination

The export destination for log sinks has to be created before the sink, through either gcloud command-line tool, GCP Console, or the GCP APIs.

The supported export destinations for export sinks are:

• A Cloud Storage bucket
• A Cloud Pub/Sub topic
• A BigQuery table

The export destination can be created in any GCP project, in any organization, if the service account from the log sink has permissions to write to the export destination.

Creating an aggregated export sink

To create an aggregated export sink in GCP folders, billing accounts, or organizations, you can use either the Stackdriver Logging API or gcloud command-line tool.

Note: Export sinks for folders, billing accounts, and organizations cannot be created from Google Cloud Platform Console. You can use Google Cloud Platform Console to create project-level (non-aggregated) export sinks only.

Logging API

To create a logging sink, use organizations.sinks.create, folders.sinks.create or billingAccounts.sinks.create in the Stackdriver Logging API. Prepare the arguments to the method as follows:

1. Set the parent parameter to be the GCP organization, folder, or billing account in which to create the sink. The parent must be one of the following:

   • organizations/[ORGANIZATION_ID]
   • folders/[FOLDER_ID]
   • billingAccounts/[BILLING_ACCOUNT_ID]
   Note: You must have the Logs Configuration Writer Cloud IAM role for the parent to create the sink. For more information about Logging Cloud IAM roles, review the Access control guide.

2. In the LogSink object in the method request body:

   • Set includeChildren to True.

   • Set the filter property, keeping in mind that log entries from all your projects will be matched against the filter.

     For some examples of useful filters, go to Using filters with aggregated exports.

   • Set the remaining LogSink fields as you would for any sink. For more information, see Creating sinks.

3. Call organizations.sinks.create or folders.sinks.create to create the sink.

4. Retrieve the service account name used to create the sink from the API response.

5. Give that service account permission to write to your export destination.

   If you do not have permission to make that change to the export destination, then send the service account name to someone who can make that change for you.

   For more information about granting service accounts permissions for resources, review Granting roles to service accounts.

gcloud

To create a logging sink, use the logging sinks create command.

1. Supply the sink name, export destination, logs filter, and the ID of the folder, billing account, or organization.

   For example, set up an aggregated export on the folder level like this:

   gcloud logging sinks create [SINK_NAME] \
   storage.googleapis.com/[BUCKET_NAME] --include-children \
   --folder=[FOLDER_ID] --log-filter="logName:activity"

   Notes:

   • To create a sink on the organization level, replace --folder=[FOLDER_ID] with --organization=[ORGANIZATION_ID]. For a billing account, replace with --billing-account=[BILLING_ACCOUNT_ID].

   • For the sink to include all projects within the organization, the --include-children flag must be set, even when the --organization flag is passed to create. When set to false (the default), a sink will only export logs from the host resource.

   • You need the Logs Configuration Writer Cloud IAM role for the parent to create the sink. For more information about Logging Cloud IAM roles, review the Access control guide.

   • For some examples of useful filters, go to Using filters with aggregated exports.

2. Retrieve the service account name used to create the sink from the command output.

3. Give that service account permission to write to your export destination.

   If you do not have permission to make that change to the export destination, then send the service account name to someone who can make that change for you.

   For more information about granting service accounts permissions for resources, review Granting roles to service accounts.

Using filters with aggregated exports

Like any export sink, your aggregated export sink contains a filter that selects individual log entries. For more details about filters, go to Advanced logs filters.

Following are some examples of filter comparisons that are useful when using the aggregated export feature. Some examples use the following notation:

• : is the substring operator. Do not substitute the = operator.
• ... represents any additional filter comparisons.
• Variables are indicated by brackets []). Replace them with valid values.

Choosing audit logs

To export audit logs, choose one of the following sample comparisons:

log_name:"/logs/cloudaudit.googleapis.com"

log_name:"/logs/cloudaudit.googleapis.com%2Factivity" AND...

log_name:"/logs/cloudaudit.googleapis.com%2Fdata_access" AND...

log_name:"/logs/cloudaudit.googleapis.com%2Fsystem_event" AND...

For information about audit logs, go to Cloud Audit Logs.

Choosing export source

To export logs from specific projects, folders, or organizations, use one of the following sample comparisons:

logName:"projects/[PROJECT_ID]/logs/" AND ... 

logName:("projects/[PROJECT_A_ID]/logs/" OR "projects/[PROJECT_B_ID]/logs/") AND ... 

logName:"folders/[FOLDER_ID]/logs/" AND ... 

logName:"organizations/[ORGANIZATION_ID]/logs/" AND ... 

Choosing resources

To export logs from only a specific resource in a project, use multiple comparisons to specify the resource exactly:

logName:"projects/[PROJECT_ID]/logs" AND
resource.type=[RESOURCE_TYPE] AND
resource.labels.instance_id=[INSTANCE_ID]

For a list of resource types, go to Monitored resource types.

Sampling log entries

To export a random sample of log entries, add the sample built-in function. For example, to export only 10% of the log entries matching your current filter, use this addition:

sample(insertId, 0.10) AND ...

For more information, review the sample function.

For more information about Stackdriver Logging filters, go to Advanced logs filters.