AWS Kinesis Data Streams Sink

The Vector aws_kinesis_streams sink batches log events to Amazon Web Service's Kinesis Data Stream service via the PutRecords API endpoint.

Configuration

• Common
• Advanced

vector.toml

[sinks.my_sink_id]
  # REQUIRED - General
  type = "aws_kinesis_streams" # example, must be: "aws_kinesis_streams"
  inputs = ["my-source-id"] # example
  region = "us-east-1" # example
  stream_name = "my-stream" # example
  
  # REQUIRED - requests
  encoding = "json" # example, enum
  
  # OPTIONAL - General
  partition_key_field = "user_id" # example, no default

Options

14 items

common onlyrequired only

intbytesoptional

batch_size

The maximum size of a batch before it is flushed. See Buffers & Batches for more info.

Default: 1049000

View examples

intsecondsoptional

batch_timeout

The maximum age of a batch before it is flushed. See Buffers & Batches for more info.

Default: 1

View examples

tableoptional

buffer

Configures the sink specific buffer.

intbytesoptional

max_size

The maximum size of the buffer on the disk.

No default

Only relevant when: type = "disk"

View examples

inteventsoptional

num_items

The maximum number of events allowed in the buffer.

Default: 500

Only relevant when: type = "memory"

View examples

stringenumoptional

type

The buffer's type / location. disk buffers are persistent and will be retained between restarts.

Default: "memory"

Enum, must be one of: "memory" "disk"

View examples

stringenumoptional

when_full

The behavior when the buffer becomes full.

Default: "block"

Enum, must be one of: "block" "drop_newest"

View examples

commonstringenumrequired

encoding

The encoding format used to serialize the events before outputting.

No default

Enum, must be one of: "json" "text"

View examples

booloptional

healthcheck

Enables/disables the sink healthcheck upon start. See Health Checks for more info.

Default: true

View examples

commonstringoptional

partition_key_field

The log field used as the Kinesis record's partition key value. See Partitioning for more info.

No default

View examples

commonstringrequired

region

The AWS region of the target Kinesis stream resides.

No default

View examples

intoptional

request_in_flight_limit

The maximum number of in-flight requests allowed at any given time. See Rate Limits for more info.

Default: 5

View examples

intsecondsoptional

request_rate_limit_duration_secs

The window used for the request_rate_limit_num option See Rate Limits for more info.

Default: 1

View examples

intoptional

request_rate_limit_num

The maximum number of requests allowed within the request_rate_limit_duration_secs window. See Rate Limits for more info.

Default: 5

View examples

intoptional

request_retry_attempts

The maximum number of retries to make for failed requests. See Retry Policy for more info.

Default: 5

View examples

intsecondsoptional

request_retry_backoff_secs

The amount of time to wait before attempting a failed request again. See Retry Policy for more info.

Default: 1

View examples

intsecondsoptional

request_timeout_secs

The maximum time a request can take before being aborted. It is highly recommended that you do not lower value below the service's internal timeout, as this could create orphaned requests, pile on retries, and result in deuplicate data downstream.

Default: 30

View examples

commonstringrequired

stream_name

The stream name of the target Kinesis Logs stream.

No default

View examples

Output

The aws_kinesis_streams sink batches log events to Amazon Web Service's Kinesis Data Stream service via the PutRecords API endpoint. Batches are flushed via the batch_size or batch_timeout options. You can learn more in the buffers & batches section. For example:

How It Works

Buffers & Batches

The aws_kinesis_streams sink buffers & batches data as shown in the diagram above. You'll notice that Vector treats these concepts differently, instead of treating them as global concepts, Vector treats them as sink specific concepts. This isolates sinks, ensuring services disruptions are contained and delivery guarantees are honored.

Batches are flushed when 1 of 2 conditions are met:

1. The batch age meets or exceeds the configured batch_timeout (default: 1 seconds).
2. The batch size meets or exceeds the configured batch_size (default: 1049000 bytes).

Buffers are controlled via the buffer.* options.

Environment Variables

Environment variables are supported through all of Vector's configuration. Simply add ${MY_ENV_VAR} in your Vector configuration file and the variable will be replaced before being evaluated.

You can learn more in the Environment Variables section.

Health Checks

Health checks ensure that the downstream service is accessible and ready to accept data. This check is performed upon sink initialization. If the health check fails an error will be logged and Vector will proceed to start.

Require Health Checks

If you'd like to exit immediately upon a health check failure, you can pass the --require-healthy flag:

vector --config /etc/vector/vector.toml --require-healthy

Disable Health Checks

If you'd like to disable health checks for this sink you can set the healthcheck option to false.

Partitioning

By default, Vector issues random 16 byte values for each Kinesis record's partition key, evenly distributing records across your Kinesis partitions. Depending on your use case this might not be sufficient since random distribution does not preserve order. To override this, you can supply the partition_key_field option. This option represents a field on your event to use for the partition key value instead. This is useful if you have a field already on your event, and it also pairs nicely with the add_fields transform.

Missing keys or blank values

Kenisis requires a value for the partition key and therefore if the key is missing or the value is blank the event will be dropped and a warning level log event will be logged. As such, the field specified in the partition_key_field option should always contain a value.

Values that exceed 256 characters

If the value provided exceeds the maximum allowed length of 256 characters Vector will slice the value and use the first 256 characters.

Non-string values

Vector will coerce the value into a string.

Provisioning & capacity planning

This is generally outside the scope of Vector but worth touching on. When you supply your own partition key it opens up the possibility for "hot spots", and you should be aware of your data distribution for the key you're providing. Kinesis provides the ability to manually split shards to accomodate this. If they key you're using is dynamic and unpredictable we highly recommend recondsidering your ordering policy to allow for even and random distribution.

Rate Limits

Vector offers a few levers to control the rate and volume of requests to the downstream service. Start with the request_rate_limit_duration_secs and request_rate_limit_num options to ensure Vector does not exceed the specified number of requests in the specified window. You can further control the pace at which this window is saturated with the request_in_flight_limit option, which will guarantee no more than the specified number of requests are in-flight at any given time.

Please note, Vector's defaults are carefully chosen and it should be rare that you need to adjust these. If you found a good reason to do so please share it with the Vector team by opening an issie.

Retry Policy

Vector will retry failed requests (status == 429, >= 500, and != 501). Other responses will not be retried. You can control the number of retry attempts and backoff rate with the request_retry_attempts and request_retry_backoff_secs options.