Cloud Fields Usage and Examples

Here are the subjects covered in this page.

The cloud fields can be used to * describe the cloud resource an event comes from * or to describe the context of an external cloud resource that has a direct invocation relationship to the observed service or resource

Use the cloud fields at the root of an event to describe the cloud resource the event primarily relates to. An example for this use case is a log entry being recorded for a service that is deployed in a cloud environment:

{
  "cloud": {
    "provider": "aws",
    "region": "us-east-1",
    "service": { "name": "ec2" }
  }
}

Managed cloud services can be in an invocation relationship to the observed service (i.e. service for which the corresponding event is captured). For instance, an observed service running on AWS Lambda can be invoked through an AWS API Gateway. Another example is an observed service that invokes an external cloud service (e.g. AWS Simple Email Service). In the context of an invocation relationship, cloud fields can be nested under cloud.origin.* and cloud.target.*, respectively, to capture the cloud context on origin or target cloud services from the perspective of an observed service. This concept is similar to nesting of service fields under service.origin.* and service.target.*.

Let’s consider an exemplary event that represents an inbound AWS Lambda invocation coming from an AWS API Gateway. Use the following cloud.origin.* nesting to describe the API Gateway service from the perspective of the AWS Lambda service:

{
  "service": { 
    "name": "MyLambdaFunction",
    "version": "1.0.0",
    "origin": { 
      "name": "MyGateway",
      "version" "2.0",
    }
  },
  "cloud": { 
    "provider": "aws",
    "region": "us-east-1",
    "service": { "name": "lambda" },
    "origin": { 
      "provider": "aws",
      "region": "eu-west-1",
      "service": { "name": "apigateway" }
    }
  }
}

Note that cloud.origin.* and cloud.target.* fields should only be used on events that represent an invocation relationship.