AWS ECS and Fargate telemetry integration

Test the integration

Send and verify events with AWS ECS and Fargate telemetry integration

Use AWS ECS and Fargate telemetry integration where your app knows the final result. Collect only the fields you need, then verify a test event before building charts.

1
Choose the outcome
ECS release reliability
2
Define the contract
service, ecs_task_family, ecs_task_revision, availability_zone, region, and release
3
Log the final result
Read ECS_CONTAINER_METADATA_URI_V4 from the task runtime and request /task locally with a short timeout. Cache the stable family, revision, and availability-zone fields instead of reading metadata per event.
4
Check the stored event
Exercise a known fixture, then inspect api_request_completed for one correctly typed terminal row.

Before you start

An ECS task with the version 4 metadata endpoint exposed by the runtime
Telemetry initialized once in the trusted application container with a write-scoped key
Stable service, route, job, release, and outcome fields owned by the application

Delivery setup

Install and initialize server-side

Import telemetry-sh in server-only code and initialize it once with process.env.TELEMETRY_API_KEY. Keep ingestion credentials out of browser bundles, client-visible environment variables, source control, logs, and exception messages.

aws-ecs-fargate-install

npm installation

bash

npm install telemetry-sh

1Create one reusable server-side client. Set its timeout and retry limit.
2Log an event when the operation succeeds, fails, retries, or times out.
3Send test events with known results and inspect the stored rows before enabling an alert.

Snippet

Start with one structured event

Add this shape where the workflow completes, fails, or retries. Then build the dashboard from real fields.

aws-ecs-fargate

AWS ECS and Fargate telemetry integration event

javascript

let cachedEcsContext;

async function getEcsContext() {
  if (cachedEcsContext) return cachedEcsContext;
  const baseUrl = process.env.ECS_CONTAINER_METADATA_URI_V4;
  if (!baseUrl) return {};

  const response = await fetch(`${baseUrl}/task`, {
    signal: AbortSignal.timeout(1000),
  });
  if (!response.ok) throw new Error("ecs_metadata_unavailable");

  const task = await response.json();
  cachedEcsContext = {
    ecs_task_family: task.Family,
    ecs_task_revision: task.Revision,
    availability_zone: task.AvailabilityZone,
  };
  return cachedEcsContext;
}

await telemetry.log("api_request_completed", {
  route_template: "/api/projects/:id",
  status: "success",
  status_code: 200,
  duration_ms: 184,
  service: "projects-api",
  release: process.env.APP_RELEASE ?? "development",
  ...(await getEcsContext()),
});

Event schema

service, ecs_task_family, ecs_task_revision, availability_zone, region, and release

route_template or job_name, status, duration_ms, retry_count, and controlled error_type

No task-role credentials, metadata URI, environment dump, container labels, raw ARN, request body, or exception text

Check your setup

Checkpoint 1

Read ECS_CONTAINER_METADATA_URI_V4 from the task runtime and request /task locally with a short timeout. Cache the stable family, revision, and availability-zone fields instead of reading metadata per event.

Checkpoint 2

Keep short-lived task and container identifiers out of routine groupings. Filter by them when investigating a specific incident.

Checkpoint 3

Record application outcomes in request or worker handlers. The metadata endpoint adds deployment context. Keep CloudWatch metrics and distributed traces for infrastructure diagnosis.

Verification

Prove the event arrived

Run this after exercising known success and failure cases. Replace the fallback table name if your final event contract differs from the snippet.

aws-ecs-fargate-verification

AWS ECS and Fargate telemetry integration verification query

sql

SELECT *
FROM api_request_completed
ORDER BY timestamp_utc DESC
LIMIT 20;

Confirm one terminal row per logical outcome, with the expected status, identifiers, units, and UTC time.

Inspect the inferred schema and verify that retries do not change field types or generate a new logical event ID.

Search the stored fields for credentials, raw payloads, prompts, private content, and unbounded error messages.

Exercise a provider timeout, ingestion rejection, and process shutdown before treating the dashboard as complete.

Implementation references

Review the event contract, data-safety guidance, and upstream primary documentation before enabling a new production path.

Infrastructure reliability with SQL API reliability by release Missing heartbeat SQL Amazon ECS task metadata endpoint version 4 Fargate task metadata endpoint

Where to log

Keep the outcome event small and recoverable

This pattern provides

Record the outcome as an event you can query with SQL.
Stable fields for dashboards, alerts, and cross-event correlation.
Test events for checking success, failure, retries, and timeouts.

This pattern does not provide

An OTLP exporter, automatic collection pipeline, or replacement for detailed traces and diagnostic logs.
Exactly-once delivery merely because the payload contains an event ID.
Permission to collect raw provider payloads, user content, credentials, or regulated data.

Delivery and idempotency Batching and shutdown Troubleshoot ingestion

Example event schemas

Check what each event records, when to send it, and which field types it needs. Review the example payload and privacy checklist before using it in production.

API reliability10 fields