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Platform Query Library

Use these CloudWatch Logs Insights queries against Elastic Beanstalk activity logs to inspect deployment lifecycle steps, environment operations, and health state transitions at the platform level.

When to Use

  • Use when a deployment fails or takes longer than expected and you need to identify which lifecycle phase stalled.
  • Use when environment health oscillates and you need a timeline of health state changes with cause messages.
  • Use during platform updates or managed action windows to monitor update progress and detect rollback triggers.
  • Use after scaling events to verify that new instances completed initialization successfully.

Prerequisites

  • CloudWatch Logs agent enabled on the Elastic Beanstalk environment (aws:elasticbeanstalk:cloudwatch:logs namespace).
  • Platform activity log group streaming to CloudWatch: /aws/elasticbeanstalk/$ENV_NAME/var/log/eb-activity.log.
  • IAM permissions for logs:StartQuery, logs:GetQueryResults, and logs:FilterLogEvents.
  • Understanding of Elastic Beanstalk deployment lifecycle phases: download, extract, pre-deploy hooks, application start, post-deploy hooks, health check.

Log Group Pattern

/aws/elasticbeanstalk/$ENV_NAME/var/log/eb-activity.log

Replace $ENV_NAME with your environment name. For Amazon Linux 2023 environments, the engine log at var/log/eb-engine.log provides additional detail on hook execution.

flowchart LR
    A[eb-activity.log / eb-engine.log] --> B[CloudWatch Logs Agent]
    B --> C[CloudWatch Log Group]
    C --> D[Platform Query Library]
    D --> E[Deployment Events]
    D --> F[Health Transitions]

Interpretation Guidance

  • Deployment phase failures typically show [ERROR] entries with hook script names and exit codes. The failing hook identifies the exact lifecycle step to investigate.
  • Health transitions from Green to Severe during deploy indicate that the new application version is crashing. Cross-reference with Startup Errors to see the application-side failure.
  • Repeated health transitions without deployment activity suggest infrastructure instability such as instance termination, AZ issues, or resource exhaustion. Check Health Transitions alongside CloudWatch EC2 metrics.

Queries

Query Description Link
Deployment Events Summarize deploy phases, failures, and completion markers from activity logs deployment-events.md
Health Transitions Show environment health changes and cause messages over time health-transitions.md

See Also

Sources

  • https://docs.aws.amazon.com/elasticbeanstalk/latest/dg/AWSHowTo.cloudwatchlogs.html
  • https://docs.aws.amazon.com/AmazonCloudWatch/latest/logs/CWL_QuerySyntax.html
  • https://docs.aws.amazon.com/elasticbeanstalk/latest/dg/using-features.logging.html