Enable or turn off detailed monitoring for your instances
By default, your instance is enabled for basic monitoring. You can optionally enable detailed monitoring. After you enable detailed monitoring, the Amazon EC2 console displays monitoring graphs with a 1-minute period for the instance.
The following describes the data interval and charge for basic and detailed monitoring for instances.
| Monitoring type | Description | Charges |
|---|---|---|
| Basic monitoring | Data is available automatically in 5-minute periods. | No charge. |
| Detailed monitoring | Data is available in 1-minute periods. To get this level of data, you must specifically enable it for the instance. For the instances where you've enabled detailed monitoring, you can also get aggregated data across groups of similar instances. | You are charged per metric that is sent to CloudWatch. You are not charged for data storage. For
more information, see Paid tier and Example 1 - EC2 Detailed
Monitoring on the Amazon CloudWatch pricing page |
Required IAM permissions
To enable detailed monitoring for an instance, your user must have permission to use the MonitorInstances API action. To turn off detailed monitoring for an instance, your user must have permission to use the UnmonitorInstances API action.
Enable detailed monitoring
You can enable detailed monitoring on an instance as you launch it or after the instance is running or stopped. Enabling detailed monitoring on an instance does not affect the monitoring of the EBS volumes attached to the instance. For more information, see Amazon CloudWatch metrics for Amazon EBS.
Turn off detailed monitoring
You can turn off detailed monitoring on an instance as you launch it or after the instance is running or stopped.