collectd & statsd

collectd

A daemon that collects system metrics (disk, memory, network, etc.)
Runs locally and sends data to CloudWatch Agent
CloudWatch Agent parses its output
You’ll need to integrate with the config.json
CloudWatch agent listens on UDP 25826 for collectd.

...
LoadPlugin network
<Plugin network>
  Server "127.0.0.1" "25826"
</Plugin>
...

// config.json
"metrics": {
  "metrics_collected": {
    "collectd": {},
  }
}

statsd

A UDP-based protocol for custom application metrics
CloudWatch Agent can run a statsd listener on port 8125
Your app sends metrics like page_load_time:300|ms or users:5|g via UDP
You can simulate statdsd metrics maybe with a cron job

"statsd": {
  "service_address": ":8125",
  "metrics_collection_interval": 60,
  "metrics_aggregation_interval": 60
}

I’ve configured a cron job to hit the port cw-agent is listening on

#!/bin/bash
echo "myapp.login.count:1|c" | nc -u -w0 127.0.0.1 8125