Monitor AWS accounts by using BindPlane and Cloud Monitoring

This document shows you how to monitor AWS accounts by using BindPlane and Cloud Monitoring. BindPlane is a service that connects the health, performance data, and logs of over 150 different data sources directly into Monitoring.

Google Cloud and Blue Medora have partnered together to provide BindPlane to Cloud Monitoring users for their AWS accounts. BindPlane is offered at no additional cost to Cloud Monitoring customers, but using BindPlane might increase ingestion of monitoring or log data.

For more information about BindPlane, refer to Blue Medora's documentation.

Before you begin

This guide is intended for new AWS users getting started using BindPlane from Blue Medora. For existing AWS users using Cloud Monitoring, refer to the Transitioning AWS monitoring to BindPlane guide.

Install the BindPlane Integration

Begin the installation process by creating a BindPlane account.

Once logged in, complete the steps to connect to Cloud Monitoring, install a Collector, and connect to a data source.

Connecting to Cloud Monitoring

To connect to Cloud Monitoring, complete the following steps.

  1. In BindPlane, click Add Destination.

  2. Select Cloud Monitoring.

  3. To configure the Monitoring destination, add a JSON key from a service account that has Monitoring Admin permissions.

    For help finding this information, refer to Blue Medora's Google Cloud Monitoring document.

Installing the Collector

BindPlane Collectors reside inside your network and connect to any data source you want to monitor. The Collector requires a server with network access to the data sources you're monitoring, and you can add multiple Collectors if you have multiple isolated networks.

To install the Collector:

  1. In BindPlane, click Add Collector.

  2. Select the platform on which you want to run your Collector.

    You can either select the Operating System on which to run your Collector, or you can select a template that deploys a linux image with the collector for AWS.

    For more information about the AWS template, refer to the Blue Medora AWS Collector Deployments guide.

  3. Copy the installation command by clicking the Clipboard icon.

  4. Log into the machine you want to install the collector on and run the command.

Connecting to the data source

A Source is any object you want to monitor. It could be a database, a web service, or even a hardware device in your data center.

To add a source:

  1. In BindPlane, click Add Source.

  2. Select which the Source you want to monitor.

  3. Select a Collector to use.

    If you added multiple Collectors for multiple networks or data centers, select the Collector in the same region as your Source.

  4. Enter your credentials and click Test Connection to verify that everything's working correctly.

  5. Click Add to begin monitoring.

For every AWS data source, an AWS user with certain permissions must exist to monitor that particular source. BindPlane provides a Master AWS Least Privileged User to monitor every AWS source currently available.

What's next

  • To create your own Cloud Monitoring metrics, see Custom metrics.

  • To use the Cloud Monitoring API, see the API reference.

  • For information about Cloud Logging and its relation to Cloud Monitoring, see the Logging documentation.