Amazon CloudWatch | Alarms Flashcards
How long does CloudWatch Logs store my log data?
Alarms
Amazon CloudWatch | Management Tools
You can store your log data in CloudWatch Logs for as long as you want. By default, CloudWatch Logs will store your log data indefinitely. You can change the retention for each Log Group at any time.
What types of CloudWatch Alarms can be created?
Alarms
Amazon CloudWatch | Management Tools
You can create an alarm to monitor any Amazon CloudWatch metric in your account. For example, you can create alarms on an Amazon EC2 instance CPU utilization, Amazon ELB request latency, Amazon DynamoDB table throughput, Amazon SQS queue length, or even the charges on your AWS bill.
You can also create an alarm on custom metrics that are specific to your custom applications or infrastructure. If the custom metric is a high-resolution metric, you have the option of creating high-resolution alarms that alert as soon as 10-second or 30-second periods.
Please reference the CloudWatch pricing page to learn more.
What actions can I take from a CloudWatch Alarm?
Alarms
Amazon CloudWatch | Management Tools
When you create an alarm, you can configure it to perform one or more automated actions when the metric you chose to monitor exceeds a threshold you define. For example, you can set an alarm that sends you an email, publishes to an SQS queue, stops or terminates an Amazon EC2 instance, or executes an Auto Scaling policy. Since Amazon CloudWatch alarms are integrated with Amazon Simple Notification Service, you can also use any notification type supported by SNS.
What thresholds can I set to trigger a CloudWatch Alarm?
Alarms
Amazon CloudWatch | Management Tools
When you create an alarm, you first choose the Amazon CloudWatch metric you want it to monitor. Next, you choose the evaluation period (e.g., five minutes or one hour) and a statistical value to measure (e.g., Average or Maximum). To set a threshold, set a target value and choose whether the alarm will trigger when the value is greater than (>), greater than or equal to (>=), less than (
My CloudWatch Alarm is constantly in the Alarm state, what did I do wrong?
Alarms
Amazon CloudWatch | Management Tools
Alarms continue to evaluate metrics against your chosen threshold, even after they have already triggered. This allows you to view its current up-to-date state at any time. You may notice that one of your alarms stays in the ALARM state for a long time. If your metric value is still in breach of your threshold, the alarm will remain in the ALARM state until it no longer breaches the threshold. This is normal behavior. If you want your alarm to treat this new level as OK, you can adjust the alarm threshold accordingly.
