AWS Classic Load Balancer

AWS Elastic Load Balancer Classic distributes the incoming application traffic across multiple EC2 instances in multiple Availability Zones.

The Sumo Logic app for AWS Elastic Load Balancer Classic is a unified logs and metrics App that helps you monitor the classic load balancer. The preconfigured dashboards provide information on the latency, HTTP backend codes, requests, and host status, that help you investigate the issues in the load balancer.

Log and metric types

The Sumo Logic app for AWS Classic Load Balancer uses the following logs and metrics:

AWS Classic Load Balancer CloudTrail Logs
Classic Load Balancer Access Logs. ELB logs are stored as *.log files in the buckets you specify when you enable logging. The process to enable collection for these logs is described in AWS ELB Enable Access Logs.

The logs themselves contain these fields in this order:
```
datetime, ELB_Server, clientIP, port, backend, backend_port, requestProc, ba_Response, cli_Response, ELB_StatusCode, be_StatusCode, rcvd, send, method, protocol, domain, server_port, path
```
The log format is described in AWS ELB Access Log Collection.
AWS Classic Load Balancer CloudWatch Metrics

Sample log messages

Sample CloudTrail Log Message
2017-11-06T23:20:38 stag-www-lb 250.38.201.246:56658 10.168.203.134:23662 0.007731 0.214433 0.000261 404 200 3194 123279 \
"GET https://stag-www.sumologic.net:443/json/v2/searchquery/3E7959EC4BA8AAC5/messages/raw?offset=29&length=15&highlight=true&_=1405591692470 HTTP/1.1" \
"Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.1; Win64; x64; rv:23.0) Gecko/20131011 Firefox/23.0" \
ECDHE-RSA-CAMELLIA256-SHA384 TLSv1.2

Sample queries

Response Codes Distribution by Domain and URI (Access Log Based)
account={{account}} region={{region}} namespace={{namespace}}
| parse "* * * * * * * * * * * \"*\" \"*\" * *" as datetime, loadbalancername, client, backend, request_processing_time, backend_processing_time, response_processing_time, elb_status_code, backend_status_code, received_bytes, sent_bytes, request, user_agent, ssl_cipher, ssl_protocol
| where tolowercase(loadbalancername) matches tolowercase("{{loadbalancername}}")
| parse field=request "* *://*:*/* HTTP" as Method, Protocol, Domain, ServerPort, URI nodrop
| parse field=client "*:*" as clientIP, port nodrop
| parse field=backend "*:*" as backendIP, backend_port nodrop
| fields - request, client, backend
| if (backend_status_code matches "5*",1,0) as Backend_5XX
| if (backend_status_code matches "4*",1,0) as Backend_4XX
| if (backend_status_code matches "3*",1,0) as Backend_3XX
| if (backend_status_code matches "2*",1,0) as Backend_2XX
| sum(Backend_5XX) as Backend_5XX, sum(Backend_4XX) as Backend_4XX, sum(Backend_3XX) as Backend_3XX, sum(Backend_2XX) as Backend_2XX by loadbalancername, Domain, URI
| limit 20
| sort by Backend_5XX, Backend_4XX, Backend_3XX, Backend_2XX

4XX by Load Balancer (Metrics-based)
account={{account}} region={{region}} Namespace={{namespace}} \
loadbalancername={{loadbalancername}} metric=HTTPCode_ELB_4XX \
Statistic=Sum | sum by account, region, namespace, loadbalancername

Collecting logs and metrics for AWS Classic Load Balancer

Configure Hosted Collector

When you create an AWS Source, you'll need to identify the Hosted Collector you want to use or create a new Hosted Collector. Once you create an AWS Source, associate it with a Hosted Collector. For instructions, see Configure a Hosted Collector and Source.

Collect AWS Classic Load Balancer CloudWatch metrics

Sumo Logic supports collecting metrics using one of the following source types:

Configure an AWS Kinesis Firehose for Metrics Source (recommended)
Configure an Amazon CloudWatch Source for Metrics

note
Namespace for AWS Classic Load Balancer service is AWS/ELB.

Follow the steps below to add custom metadata fields with your metrics:

Click +Add Field under Metadata. Each field consists of a name (key) and a corresponding value.
Create a field named account and assign it a value that represents a friendly name or alias to your AWS account from which metrics are collected. This value will appear in the AWS Observability view, and metrics can be queried using the account field.
After adding fields, check their status indicators:
- A green check mark indicates the field exists and is enabled in the Fields table schema.
- An orange exclamation icon indicates the field does not exist or is disabled in the schema.
  - You will have the option to automatically add or enable the field.
  - If a field is sent but not present or enabled in the schema, it is ignored and marked as Dropped.

Collect AWS Classic Load Balancer Access logs

Prerequisites

Before you begin to use the AWS Elastic Load Balancing (ELB) Application app, complete the following steps:

Grant Sumo Logic access to an Amazon S3 bucket.
Enable Application Load Balancer logging in AWS.
Confirm that logs are being delivered to the Amazon S3 bucket.

Follow the steps below to collect access logs for AWS Classic Load Balancer:

Configure the Access Logs Source.
Add custom metadata fields with your logs:
1. Click +Add Field under Metadata. Each field consists of a name (key) and a corresponding value.
2. Create a field named account and assign it a value that represents a friendly name or alias to your AWS account from which logs are collected. This value will appear in the AWS Observability view, and logs can be queried using the account field.
3. After adding fields, check their status indicators:
  - A green check mark indicates the field exists and is enabled in the Fields table schema.
  - An orange exclamation icon indicates the field does not exist or is disabled in the schema.
    - You will have the option to automatically add or enable the field.
    - If a field is sent but not present or enabled in the schema, it is ignored and marked as Dropped.

Collect AWS Classic Load Balancer CloudTrail logs

Grant Sumo Logic access to an Amazon S3 bucket.
Create a trail for your AWS account.
Confirm that logs are being delivered to the Amazon S3 bucket.

note

Namespace for AWS Classic Load Balancer service is AWS/ELB.

Follow the steps below to collect logs for AWS Classic Load Balancer:

Configure a CloudTrail Logs Source.
Add custom metadata fields with your logs:
1. Click +Add Field under Metadata. Each field consists of a name (key) and a corresponding value.
2. Create a field named account and assign it a value that represents a friendly name or alias to your AWS account from which logs are collected. This value will appear in the AWS Observability view, and logs can be queried using the account field.
3. After adding fields, check their status indicators:
  - A green check mark indicates the field exists and is enabled in the Fields table schema.
  - An orange exclamation icon indicates the field does not exist or is disabled in the schema.
    - You will have the option to automatically add or enable the field.
    - If a field is sent but not present or enabled in the schema, it is ignored and marked as Dropped.

Centralized AWS CloudTrail log collection

In case you have a centralized collection of CloudTrail logs and are ingesting them from all accounts into a single Sumo Logic CloudTrail log source, create the following field extraction rule to map proper AWS account(s) friendly name/alias. You'll need to create it if not already present or update it as required.

Rule Name: AWS Accounts
Applied at: Ingest Time
Scope (Specific Data):
_sourceCategory=aws/observability/cloudtrail/logs

Parse Expression

Enter a parse expression to create an account field that maps to the alias you set for each sub account. For example, if you used the dev alias for an AWS account with ID 528560886094 and the prod alias for an AWS account with ID 567680881046, your parse expression would look like this:

| json "recipientAccountId"
// Manually map your aws account id with the AWS account alias you setup earlier for individual child account
| "" as account
| if (recipientAccountId = "528560886094",  "dev", account) as account
| if (recipientAccountId = "567680881046",  "prod", account) as account
| fields account

Installing the AWS Classic Load Balancer app

Now that you have set up a collection for AWS Classic Load Balancer, install the Sumo Logic app to use the pre-configured searches and dashboards that provide visibility into your environment for real-time analysis of overall usage.

To install the app, do the following:

note

Next-Gen App: To install or update the app, you must be an account administrator or a user with Manage Apps, Manage Monitors, Manage Fields, Manage Metric Rules, and Manage Collectors capabilities depending upon the different content types part of the app.

Select App Catalog.
In the 🔎 Search Apps field, run a search for your desired app, then select it.
Click Install App.
note
Sometimes this button says Add Integration.
Click Next in the Setup Data section.
In the Configure section of your respective app, complete the following fields.
1. Field Name. If you already have collectors and sources set up, select the configured metadata field name (eg _sourcecategory) or specify other custom metadata (eg: _collector) along with its metadata Field Value.
Click Next. You will be redirected to the Preview & Done section.

Post-installation

Once your app is installed, it will appear in your Installed Apps folder, and dashboard panels will start to fill automatically.

Each panel slowly fills with data matching the time range query received since the panel was created. Results will not immediately be available but will be updated with full graphs and charts over time.

As part of the app installation process, the following content will be created by default along with dashboards and monitor template:

Fields

account Name / alias to the AWS account.
accountid AWS account id.
region The region to which the resource name belongs to.
namespace Namespace for AWS Classic Load Balancer Service is AWS/ELB.
loadbalancername Classic Load Balancer name.

Field Extraction Rule(s)

The FER AwsObservabilityCLBAccessLogsFER to extract fields loadbalancername and namespace from access logs will be created as a part of app installation.

The FER AwsObservabilityCLBCloudTrailLogsFER to extract fields region, namespace, loadbalancername, and accountid from CloudTrail logs will be created as a part of app installation.

Viewing the AWS Classic Load Balancer dashboards

Overview

The AWS Classic Load Balancer - Overview dashboard provides visibility into the health of your Classic Load Balancer, with at-a-glance views of latency, request and host status, requests from malicious sources, and HTTP backend codes.

Use this dashboard to:

Monitor requests to each load balancer to ensure the load is being distributed as desired.
Monitor trends for load balancers errors, 4xx and 5xx errors, as well as healthy and unhealthy hosts.
Monitor the current state across all load balancers via active connections, new connections, backend connection errors, and rejected connections.

Response Analysis

The AWS Classic Load Balancer - Response Analysis dashboard provides insights into how your load balancers respond to clients.

Use this dashboard to:

Monitor incoming client locations for all 5XX, 4XX, and 3XX error responses.
Quickly correlate error responses using load balancer access logs and AWS CloudWatch metrics to determine the possible cause for failures and decide corrective actions.

AWS Classic Load Balancer - Response Analysis

Backend Response Analysis

The AWS Classic Load Balancer - Backend Response Analysis dashboard provides insights into how various backend servers respond to client requests.

Use this dashboard to:

Monitor trends of all response codes for your backend servers by LoadBalancer and availability zones.
Correlate response code trends across load balancer access logs and CloudWatch metrics to determine the root cause for failures.

AWS Classic Load Balancer - Backend Response Analysis

Latency Overview

The The AWS Classic Load Balancer - Latency Overview dashboard provides insights into load balancers response times and availability zones, including backend log response times.

Use this dashboard to:

Monitor response times by load balancer, and availability zone.
Monitor client latency and processing times for backend servers.

AWS Classic Load Balancer - Latency Overview

Latency Details

The The AWS Classic Load Balancer - Latency Details dashboard provides insights into client latency by domain and ELB server and processing times by ELB server throughout your infrastructure.

Use this dashboard to troubleshoot load balancer performance via detailed views across client, request processing, and response time latencies.

Connection and Host Status

The AWS Classic Load Balancer - Connection and Host Status dashboard provides insights into active and rejected connections, backend connection errors, and healthy and unhealthy hosts.

Use this dashboard to:

Monitor active connections, new connections, rejected connections, and connection errors for load balancers.
Monitor healthy and unhealthy host counts by the load balancer and availability zone across your infrastructure.

AWS Classic Load Balancer - Connections and Host Status

Requests and Processed Bytes

The AWS Classic Load Balancer - Requests and Processed Bytes dashboard provides insights into client requests, network traffic, and processed data.

Use this dashboard to:

Monitor client request load, network traffic, and processed bytes to determine how to configure load balancers for optimal performance best.
Determine how to allocate best backend resources based on load.

AWS Classic Load Balancer - Requests and Processed Bytes

Threat Intel

The AWS Classic Load Balancer - Threat Intel dashboard provides insights into incoming requests from malicious sources determined via Sumo Logic threat intelligence. Dashboard panels show detailed information on malicious IPs and the malicious confidence of each threat.

Use this dashboard to:

Identify known malicious IPs that are accessing your load-balancers and use firewall access control lists to prevent them from sending you traffic going forward.
Monitor malicious confidence level for all incoming malicious IP addresses posing the threats.

AWS Classic Load Balancer - Threat Intel

CloudTrail Audit

The AWS Classic Load Balancer - CloudTrail Audit dashboard provides a comprehensive overview of activities through CloudTrail audit logs. It visualizes successful and failed events globally, event trends, error details, and user activities, offering insights into load balancer performance, security, and usage patterns.

Use this dashboard to:

Monitor the geographical distribution of successful and failed load balancer events, allowing for quick identification of regions with high activity or potential issues.
Track the overall success rate of load balancer events and analyze trends over time, helping to identify sudden changes or patterns in the performance.
Investigate specific error events, including their details, frequency, and associated users, enabling faster troubleshooting and resolution of issues.
Identify the most common error types and the users experiencing highest failure rates, facilitating targeted improvements and user support.

AWS Classic Load Balancer - CloudTrail Audit

Create monitors for AWS Classic Load Balancer app

From your App Catalog:

From the Sumo Logic navigation, select App Catalog.
In the Search Apps field, search for and then select your app.
Make sure the app is installed.
Navigate to What's Included tab and scroll down to the Monitors section.
Click Create next to the pre-configured monitors. In the create monitors window, adjust the trigger conditions and notifications settings based on your requirements.
Scroll down to Monitor Details.
Under Location click on New Folder.
note
By default, monitor will be saved in the root folder. So to make the maintenance easier, create a new folder in the location of your choice.
Enter Folder Name. Folder Description is optional.
tip
Using app version in the folder name will be helpful to determine the versioning for future updates.
Click Create. Once the folder is created, click on Save.