Monitor AWS Application Load Balancer with SigNoz

One-Click Integration

Step 1: Connect Your AWS Account

Follow the One-Click AWS Integrations Guide to:

1. Deploy the CloudFormation stack
2. Connect your AWS account to SigNoz

Step 2: Enable ALB Monitoring

Once connected, SigNoz will auto-discover your ALBs and begin collecting:

• CloudWatch Metrics: Request count, latency, HTTP error codes, active connections

What's Collected

Pre-built Dashboards

Navigate to Dashboards and search for "ALB" to find automatically imported dashboards.

Manual Setup (CloudWatch Exporter)

To collect ALB metrics manually, you can use the Prometheus CloudWatch Exporter. This tool scrapes metrics from AWS CloudWatch and exposes them in Prometheus format, which the OpenTelemetry Collector can then scrape and forward to SigNoz.

Prerequisites

Before proceeding, ensure you have:

• OpenTelemetry Collector installed and configured. See Get Started with OTel Collector.
• Java 11 or higher installed on the host machine (for JAR-based setup), or Docker (for container-based setup).
• AWS credentials configured via environment variables (AWS_ACCESS_KEY_ID, AWS_SECRET_ACCESS_KEY), IAM role, or ~/.aws/credentials.
• IAM permissions for the credentials:
  • cloudwatch:ListMetrics
  • cloudwatch:GetMetricStatistics

Where to Run the CloudWatch Exporter

The CloudWatch Exporter should run on a machine that:

1. Has network access to AWS CloudWatch APIs.
2. Has AWS credentials configured.
3. Is network-accessible from your OpenTelemetry Collector.

For SigNoz Cloud users, run the exporter on any EC2 instance, VM, or container with AWS credentials. The OTel Collector on the same host will forward metrics to SigNoz Cloud.

For Self-Hosted users, run the exporter on the same host as your OTel Collector, or ensure network connectivity between them.

Step 1: Create Configuration File

Create a file named alb-metrics.yaml with the following configuration:

region: <aws-region>
metrics:
  - aws_namespace: AWS/ApplicationELB
    aws_metric_name: RequestCount
    aws_dimensions: [LoadBalancer]
    aws_statistics: [Sum]

  - aws_namespace: AWS/ApplicationELB
    aws_metric_name: TargetResponseTime
    aws_dimensions: [LoadBalancer]
    aws_statistics: [Average]
    aws_extended_statistics: [p99]

  - aws_namespace: AWS/ApplicationELB
    aws_metric_name: HTTPCode_Target_2XX_Count
    aws_dimensions: [LoadBalancer]
    aws_statistics: [Sum]

  - aws_namespace: AWS/ApplicationELB
    aws_metric_name: HTTPCode_Target_4XX_Count
    aws_dimensions: [LoadBalancer]
    aws_statistics: [Sum]

  - aws_namespace: AWS/ApplicationELB
    aws_metric_name: HTTPCode_Target_5XX_Count
    aws_dimensions: [LoadBalancer]
    aws_statistics: [Sum]

  - aws_namespace: AWS/ApplicationELB
    aws_metric_name: ActiveConnectionCount
    aws_dimensions: [LoadBalancer]
    aws_statistics: [Sum]

Verify these values:

• <aws-region>: Your AWS region where ALBs are deployed (e.g., us-east-1, eu-west-1, ap-south-1).

See example configurations for more service templates.

Step 2: Download and Run the Exporter

curl -LO https://repo1.maven.org/maven2/io/prometheus/cloudwatch/cloudwatch_exporter/0.16.0/cloudwatch_exporter-0.16.0-jar-with-dependencies.jar

java -jar cloudwatch_exporter-0.16.0-jar-with-dependencies.jar 9106 alb-metrics.yaml

docker run -d \
  --name cloudwatch-exporter \
  -p 9106:9106 \
  -v $(pwd)/alb-metrics.yaml:/config/config.yml \
  -e AWS_ACCESS_KEY_ID=$AWS_ACCESS_KEY_ID \
  -e AWS_SECRET_ACCESS_KEY=$AWS_SECRET_ACCESS_KEY \
  prom/cloudwatch-exporter

Verify the exporter is running by checking the metrics endpoint:

curl http://localhost:9106/metrics | grep aws_applicationelb

You should see metrics like aws_applicationelb_request_count_sum, aws_applicationelb_target_response_time_average, etc.

Step 3: Configure OpenTelemetry Collector

Add the following prometheus receiver to your existing otel-collector-config.yaml to scrape the CloudWatch Exporter:

receivers:
  prometheus:
    config:
      scrape_configs:
        - job_name: 'alb-cloudwatch'
          scrape_interval: 60s
          static_configs:
            - targets: ['<exporter-host>:9106']

Verify these values:

• <exporter-host>: The hostname or IP where the CloudWatch Exporter is running. Use localhost if running on the same machine.

Enable the prometheus receiver in your metrics pipeline by updating the service section:

service:
  pipelines:
    metrics:
      receivers: [otlp, prometheus]
      processors: [batch]
      exporters: [otlp]

Restart your OpenTelemetry Collector to apply the changes.

Validate

To confirm that ALB metrics are flowing to SigNoz:

1. Navigate to Dashboards → New Dashboard → New Panel in SigNoz.
2. In the query builder, search for metrics starting with aws_applicationelb_ (e.g., aws_applicationelb_request_count_sum).
3. Verify that metrics appear with load_balancer labels matching your ALBs.

If you see metrics with labels like load_balancer, your setup is working correctly.

Collecting ALB Access Logs

ALB access logs are typically stored in S3. Use the S3 Lambda Forwarder pattern:

1. Enable ALB access logging to an S3 bucket
2. Create a Lambda function triggered by S3 events
3. Parse and forward logs to SigNoz

See ELB Logs for the detailed S3 Lambda Forwarder setup.