Amazon CloudWatch is a powerful monitoring tool that empowers users to oversee their applications, systems, and services within the Amazon Web Services (AWS) ecosystem by gathering and presenting metrics, logs, and events in real-time. It provides essential resource measurements like latency, error rates, and CPU usage, while also allowing for the tracking of custom metrics through user-defined logs and system data.
Last November, Amazon CloudWatch introduced new Dashboard Widgets to enhance data visualization for all accessible metrics. To further enrich insights into AWS resources, CloudWatch has now launched Alarms on Dashboards. This new feature enables users to visualize alarms and metrics within the same dashboard widget, facilitating data-driven troubleshooting and analysis.
Designed for optimal visibility, CloudWatch dashboards consolidate monitoring of AWS resources across multiple regions. Users can tailor their dashboards to graphically represent various metrics, including utilization, performance, billing estimates, and alarm conditions. An alarm continuously tracks a specific metric over time and alerts users based on whether the metric surpasses predefined thresholds. When the state of an alarm changes, it can trigger actions like Auto Scaling policies or notifications to Amazon SNS, among other options.
With the integration of alarms into dashboards, CloudWatch users gain another proactive monitoring tool, allowing them to receive alerts regarding their AWS resources across different regions. Additionally, users can chart and analyze the metric data linked to alarms that have been incorporated into a dashboard. Alarms can be in one of three states:
- OK: The alarm metric value does not exceed the set threshold.
- INSUFFICIENT DATA: The alarm metric has not gathered enough data to determine its state.
- ALARM: The alarm metric value exceeds the defined threshold.
When incorporated into a dashboard, alarm states are visually represented—red for ALARM, gray for INSUFFICIENT DATA, and no fill for OK. Alarms can be displayed using various widgets, including Line, Number, and Stacked Graph widgets.
- Number Widget: Offers a quick glance at the latest value of any chosen metric, with background color changes reflecting the state of the alarm.
- Line Widget: Visualizes the actual values of selected metrics, displaying the alarm condition and threshold as a horizontal line.
- Stacked Graph Widget: Illustrates the combined effect of selected metrics, showing contributions in percentages and the alarm state.
Currently, the ability to add multiple metrics to the same widget for an alarm is under development, responding to customer feedback.
Adding Alarms to Dashboards
Let’s explore how to utilize Alarms on a CloudWatch Dashboard. In the AWS Console, navigate to CloudWatch, select Dashboards, and click the Create Dashboard button to establish the CloudWatchBlog dashboard.
Upon creating this dashboard, a dialog box will appear to facilitate widget addition. However, for now, I will skip adding widgets and focus on integrating alarms. Thus, I will cancel this step and head to the Alarms section of the CloudWatch console.
In the Alarms section, you will find all alarms and their respective states for the current region. As noted earlier, alarms can be in three states, and you can filter the display to show specific states. For instance, if I want to view only alarms in the ALARM state, I can easily adjust the filter.
Now, only the alarms currently in the ALARM state are visible. One monitors the provisioned write capacity units of an Amazon DynamoDB table, while the other tracks the CPU utilization of my active Amazon Elasticsearch instance.
Let’s consider a scenario where I use the CloudWatchBlog dashboard to troubleshoot issues with my Elasticsearch solution. First, I will add the CPU utilization alarm for Amazon Elasticsearch, known as ES Alarm, to my dashboard. I simply select the checkbox next to ES Alarm and click the Add to Dashboard button.
A dialog box will appear allowing me to select the CloudWatchBlog dashboard and choose the widget type for the alarm display. For the ES Alarm, I will opt for the Line widget and finalize the addition by clicking the Add to dashboard button.
Upon successfully adding the ES Alarm to the CloudWatchBlog dashboard, a confirmation message will appear in the CloudWatch console. If I navigate to the Dashboard section and select my CloudWatchBlog dashboard, the line widget for my ES Alarm will be visible. To ensure its permanence, I will click the Save Dashboard button.
As highlighted, one of the advantages of using a CloudWatch dashboard is the capacity to consolidate multiple alarms from various regions. Since I aim to use my dashboard for troubleshooting my Elasticsearch solution, I will create another alarm and add it to my dashboard.
To do this, I will return to the Alarms section and click the Create Alarm button. The Create Alarm dialog box will present all current metrics available in this region. I can see there are 21 metrics being tracked for Elasticsearch. By clicking on the ES Metrics link, I can review the specific metrics eligible for alarm creation.
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