CloudWatch Custom Metrics

  • Define and send your own metrics to CloudWatch
  • RAM usage, disk space, number of logged in users
  • Use API call PutMetricData
  • Ability to use dimensions (attributes) to segment metrics
    • instance.id
    • environment.name
  • Metric resolution (StorageResolution API parameter)
    • Standard: 1 minute (60 seconds)
    • High Resolution: 1/5/10/30 seconds - higher cost
      • If you set CloudWatch Alarms on High resolution metrics. You can trigger high-resolution alarm every 10 or 30 seconds or you can set regular alarm with a period of 60 seconds
  • Accept the metric data points 2 weeks in the past and 2 hours in the future
    • Make sure you configure your EC2 instance time correctly