Access application logs for GitLab Dedicated

GitLab Dedicated automatically delivers your instance’s application logs to a private Amazon S3 bucket. These logs contain both infrastructure and application data for monitoring, troubleshooting, and compliance purposes.

The S3 bucket contains logs that are:

• Stored indefinitely and encrypted using AWS KMS keys managed by GitLab.
• Organized by date in YYYY/MM/DD/HH format.
• Streamed in real-time using Amazon Kinesis Data Firehose.

If you use your own encryption keys, application logs use GitLab-managed keys, not your provided key.

View and manage application log access

You can add, edit, or remove AWS IAM users and roles that have read-only access to your application logs.

Access your application logs to do the following:

• Monitor and troubleshoot your GitLab Dedicated instance.
• Configure automated log processing and monitoring systems.
• Set up tools that retrieve logs from the S3 bucket.
• Retain audit trails for compliance reporting.

Prerequisites:

• You must have the full ARN path for each AWS user or role that needs access.

To manage log access:

1. Sign in to Switchboard.

2. At the top of the page, select Configuration.

3. Expand Resource access.

4. Under Application logs, in the Log access ARNs section:

   • To add access: Select Add ARN, enter the full ARN path, then select Save. For example:
     • User: arn:aws:iam::123456789012:user/username
     • Role: arn:aws:iam::123456789012:role/rolename
   • To edit access: Next to an ARN, select the pencil icon ( ), update the ARN, then select Save.
   • To remove access: Next to an ARN, select the trash icon ( ), then select Delete.

5. Copy the Logs S3 bucket name. Your authorized users or roles use this bucket name to access the logs.

After you configure ARN permissions and provide the bucket name to your users, they can access all objects in the S3 bucket. To verify access, use the AWS CLI.

For information about how to access S3 buckets in AWS, see Accessing an Amazon S3 bucket.

Enable S3 event notifications

You can enable S3 event notifications on your GitLab Dedicated logging bucket to integrate with your security monitoring systems. Notifications are sent when log files are created.

S3 event notifications can send notifications to:

• Amazon Simple Queue Service (SQS) queues
• Amazon Simple Notification Service (SNS) topics

The destination resources must be in the same region as your GitLab Dedicated instance.

To enable S3 event notifications:

1. Create a support ticket.

2. In your support request, include:

   • Whether you want notifications configured for your primary region, secondary region, or both.
   • Whether you want to use SQS or SNS for notifications.
   • The ARN of your SQS queue or SNS topic.

3. After GitLab Support provides the required IAM policy, attach it to your SQS queue or SNS topic.

GitLab Support then completes the S3 event notifications configuration on your S3 logs bucket.