What should the SysOps administrator do to resolve the issue?
Configure the AWS CLI on the EC2 instance. Create a cron job that calls the PutLogEvents API operation to push the log files to CloudWatch every 5 minutes.
Inspect the retention period of the CloudWatch Logs log group. Ensure that the retention period is set to a value that is greater than 1 day.
Set up an Amazon Kinesis data stream that is running in the same AWS Region as the EC2 instance. Configure the CloudWatch agent on the EC2 instance to send CloudWatch events to the data stream.
Ensure that the IAM role that is attached to the EC2 instance has permissions in CloudWatch Logs for the CreateLogGroup, CreateLogStream, PutLogEvents, and DescribeLogStreams actions.
Explanations:
Configuring the AWS CLI and using a cron job to manually push logs to CloudWatch is not necessary when the CloudWatch agent is running. The agent is designed to automatically handle log publishing, so this approach would be redundant and could lead to errors or additional overhead.
The retention period of the CloudWatch Logs log group does not affect the ability to publish logs. Even if the retention period is set to less than one day, it will not prevent logs from being published; it will only dictate how long they are retained after they are published.
Setting up an Amazon Kinesis data stream is unnecessary for the CloudWatch agent to publish logs. The CloudWatch agent can send logs directly to CloudWatch Logs without requiring Kinesis. This option complicates the setup and does not address the root cause of the issue.
The IAM role attached to the EC2 instance must have the necessary permissions to publish logs to CloudWatch Logs. Without permissions for actions such as CreateLogGroup, CreateLogStream, PutLogEvents, and DescribeLogStreams, the CloudWatch agent will not be able to function correctly, which would explain why logs are not being published.
I outline that the answer is:
Ensure that the IAM role that is attached to the EC2 instance has permissions in CloudWatch Logs for the CreateLogGroup, CreateLogStream, PutLogEvents, and DescribeLogStreams actions.