AWS Lambda is a fully scalable, highly efficient serverless computing platform that lets the user run applications with minimal to no maintenance of infrastructure. For the proper performance and for the detection of possible issues related to AWS Lambda functions, effective monitoring of AWS Lambda functions becomes imperative. A powerful open-source monitoring system named Prometheus offers a robust framework for collecting and visualizing metrics, but to bridge the gap between AWS Lambda and Prometheus, one requires a specialized exporter.From here, you can better understand the performance of your Lambda functions, identify drawbacks, and also head off potential issues before they reach you. Understanding YACEYACE is the short form for Yet Another CloudWatch Exporter. This tool enables the match of metrics of AWS CloudWatch with Prometheus to efficiently integrate and visualize performance data from AWS Lambda. Here are the important features and functionalities of YACE:Automatic Service Discovery: This plugin intelligently discovers AWS resources based on tags, eliminating the need for manual configuration.Flexible Metric Filtering: You can easily filter the metrics you want to collect with regular expressions, according to your specific monitoring needs.Rich Labeling: YACE automatically adds relevant AWS tags as labels to your metrics, giving you useful context for analysis.The flexibility of data export: choose whether to export metrics with CloudWatch timestamps or without, even export nil values if desired.Multi-Account Support: Cross-account roles can be used to monitor any number of the metrics of AWS accounts.Embeddable Library: Include YACE directly in your application to provide embedded monitoring.Large Service Coverage: YACE uses a long list of AWS services to make sure you cover all monitored infrastructure services.Setting Up the Environment to Use YACESetting up and configuring your environment to use YACE to monitor AWS Lambda functions, you will need to set up the following:Install YACE: Download the YACE binary from the official GitHub repository by moving the binary to your preferred location, such as '/usr/local/bin', and ensure that your binary is executable.Configure AWS Credentials: YACE needs AWS credentials to access CloudWatch. You can provide them in one of the following ways:Environment Variables: Set the environment variables AWS_ACCESS_KEY_ID, AWS_SECRET_ACCESS_KEY, and optionally AWS_SESSION_TOKEN.IAM Instance Profile: If it has ever run inside a container of an EC2 instance with an attached IAM role, your YACE container will automatically start with its credentials.Configuration File: You have the configuration file, for example:[default] aws_region = us-east-1 AWS_ACCESS_KEY = YOUR_ACCESS_KEY AWS_secret_access_key = your_secret_access_keyConfiguration file creation: You will have to create a YAML configuration file, like config.yml, from which you specify the metrics you want to collect, the AWS regions you need access to, and so on. Here's a simple example:Discovery:Jobs: - regions: - us-east-1 type: lambda metrics: name: Duration statistics: - Sum - Maximum - Minimum - Average period: 300 length: 3600Run YACE: Start the YACE container by mounting the configuration file and credentials:docker run -v /path/to/config.yml:/tmp/config.yml -v /path/to/credentials.yml:/exporter/.aws/credentials... quay.io/invisionag/yet-another-cloud watch-exporter:v0.19.1-alphaAccess Metrics: This is accessed, once YACE has successfully booted, via the exported metrics available at the port listened by YACE, defaulted to 5000. You may retrieve the metrics in the Prometheus format using something like curl.Creating Dashboards and AlertsDashboards and alerts are part of effective AWS Lambda monitoring. A dashboard gives you graphical representations of metrics; this makes it easy to detect any trends and anomalies and even possible problems. Alerts allow you to know when the critical metrics surpass predefined thresholds so that you can intervene timely and even solve a problem before it does more harm.Building DashboardsDashboards and alerts are parts of a good monitoring system for AWS Lambda functions. Dashboards give you a visual representation of your Lambda metrics, so you can easily identify any anomaly, existing trend, or potential problems. Alerts give you the ability to have a substantial improvement over missed events and to catch things before they become bad problems. Here's how to create dashboards and alerts for your AWS Lambda functions in a step-by-step manner:Step 1: Choose a visualization tool:Grafana: A free and open-source tool to build a custom dashboard.Amazon CloudWatch: The inbuilt monitoring service provided by AWS, which includes an inbuilt dashboard.Alternate options: You can use visualization tools such as Kibana or even custom-built solutions depending on your needs.Step 2: Connect to Your Data Source:Configuration of YACE: You have to configure YACE to export your metrics from Lambda so that they can be sent to Prometheus and/or any other supported data source.Connect Visualization Tool: The source of your Lambda metrics, for example, Prometheus or CloudWatch, should be connected.Step 3: Create Dashboards:Layout Design: Design a layout for the panels of your dashboard by which you can present different metrics or groups of metrics.Add widgets: line charts, bar charts, tables, and gauges are the widgets you can add to your dashboard to present your metrics.Configure Queries: Define your PromQL queries in the case of Prometheus or the metric expressions in CloudWatch to fetch the data you need.Personalize Look and Feel: Adjust colors, labels, and other aesthetic elements to make the dashboard both informative and beautiful to behold.Step 4: Configure Alerts:Threshold Definition: Define critical thresholds for metrics like error rates or latency.Configure alert rules: Configure rules that will alert you when metrics cross and breach thresholds.Select notification mechanisms: Inform Instrument how you would like to be notified: email, SMS, or Slack.Test Alerts: Simulate threshold breaches to confirm alerts are triggered correctly.Best Practices and TroubleshootingImplementing YACE will include efficiency and security to produce meaningful insights for your workloads in Lambda. Here are the best practices and some potential troubleshooting steps regarding AWS Lambda functions; proper monitoring must be taken into consideration:Credential Security: AWS provides secure storage methods to secure your credentials, preventing unwanted access, or you can use AWS Secrets Manager.Configuration Optimization: You need to read the YACE configuration file carefully to ensure that, for example, metrics are collected in an efficient manner and minimize resource usage.Select your metrics: Choose those metrics related to your AWS Lambda functions that are the most significant, reducing the need for collecting unnecessary data and paying extra money for that. Focus most of your metrics relating to performance, errors, and resource usage.Error Handling: Incorporate robust error handling in your code such that exceptions are properly handled and errors are logged for debugging.Wrapping up:YACE is strong and efficient when you need to monitor AWS Lambda function executions. With its clear interface and tremendous features, YACE makes it easy for you to collect and visualize those critical metrics to come up with effective monitoring solutions on AWS Lambda. All this will help you understand your Lambda workloads better, making them perform optimally.Read Morehttps://devopsden.io/article/aws-s3-bucket-notificationsFollow us onhttps://www.linkedin.com/company/devopsden/
