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Overview

CloudWatch Metric Streams can continuously export AWS service metrics to Amazon Data Firehose. Configure the metric stream to use the OpenTelemetry 1.0 output format, then configure Firehose to deliver those metrics to Bronto’s dedicated AWS metrics endpoint. This integration requires no Lambda function. Firehose handles batching, compression, and retries for delivery to Bronto.
Metrics ingestion is in public beta. Bronto supports sums, gauges, summaries, and explicit histograms. Exponential histograms are not supported, and the Metric Explorer does not currently provide a Rate function.

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Prerequisites

Before you begin, you need:
  • a Bronto API key with the ingestion role
  • your Bronto region: eu or us
  • permission to create or configure Firehose delivery streams, CloudWatch Metric Streams, and their IAM service roles
See API Keys for how to generate a key.

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Step 1 — Create a Firehose delivery stream

In the AWS Console, go to Amazon Data Firehose → Create Firehose stream and configure: cw-metrics-to-bronto is a suggested name only. You can use a different name that follows your organization’s naming conventions.
Create a Firehose stream with Direct PUT as the source and HTTP Endpoint as the destination

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Step 2 — Configure the Bronto HTTP endpoint

Configure the HTTP endpoint destination: Replace <REGION> with eu or us. For example, use https://ingestion.eu.bronto.io/aws/metrics for the EU environment or https://ingestion.us.bronto.io/aws/metrics for the US environment. Do not use the direct OTLP /v1/metrics endpoint for this Firehose workflow. Optionally, add x-bronto-tags in the destination’s Parameters section to attach comma-separated tags to the ingested metrics, for example environment=staging,region=eu-west-1. Let Firehose create a service role, or select an existing role with the permissions required to deliver to the HTTP endpoint. See AWS’s HTTP endpoint destination settings for further reading.

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Step 3 — Create a CloudWatch metric stream

In the CloudWatch console, go to Metrics → Streams, then choose Create metric stream.
CloudWatch navigation with Metrics and Streams selected
Choose Custom setup with Firehose, select the Firehose delivery stream created in Step 1, and let CloudWatch create a service role or select an existing role that can write to the stream.
CloudWatch metric stream configured with a custom Firehose destination
Set the output format to OpenTelemetry 1.0. Choose All metrics or select only the metric namespaces and metrics you want to send. In a CloudWatch monitoring account, you can also choose to include metrics from linked source accounts. This option applies to the Region in which you create the stream. CloudWatch Metric Streams always include the Minimum, Maximum, SampleCount, and Sum statistics. Additional statistics can be configured in CloudWatch at additional cost.
CloudWatch charges per metric update streamed, and Firehose charges for the data it processes. Streaming all metrics can be expensive in accounts with many metrics. Select only the namespaces you need when practical.
CloudWatch metric stream using the OpenTelemetry 1.0 output format
Enter a metric stream name and create the stream. cw-metrics-stream-to-firehose is a suggested name only; it is not required.
Suggested CloudWatch metric stream name
For AWS’s complete setup instructions, including IAM and infrastructure-as-code options, see Custom setup with Firehose.

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Automate with AWS CloudFormation

Use the Bronto CloudWatch Metrics deployment package to create and update filtered metric streams across multiple AWS accounts and Regions. For each configured target, the package creates the CloudWatch Metric Stream, encrypted Firehose delivery stream and failure-backup bucket, CloudWatch delivery logs, and required IAM roles. It supports AWS CLI profiles that use direct credentials or assume roles into target accounts, and resolves the Bronto API key from AWS Secrets Manager without reading or copying it into the deployment script. See the repository’s README for prerequisites, configuration options, example targets, filtering, dry-run deployments, linked-account metrics, retention settings, and guidance for larger AWS Organizations environments.

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Verify metric ingestion

After the selected CloudWatch namespaces emit data, open Metric Explorer in Bronto and select a recently emitted AWS metric. Confirm that its timestamp, dimensions, and optional x-bronto-tags values are present. Allow for the Firehose buffering interval before troubleshooting delivery. If delivery fails, open the /aws/kinesisfirehose/<stack-name> log group in CloudWatch Logs and inspect the HttpEndpointDelivery stream. Firehose records the HTTP response code and Bronto response details there. A valid Firehose endpoint response must use HTTP 200, contain an uncompressed application/json body, and return the request’s requestId with a numeric timestamp. See HTTP endpoint request and response specifications and HTTP endpoint troubleshooting. For supported metric types, current limitations, direct OTLP configuration, and links to the upstream OpenTelemetry documentation, see Send Metrics.

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Further reading

For assistance, contact support@bronto.io.