Monitor and analyze network flows using Network Flow Monitor performance metrics
Network Flow Monitor data and graphs help you to visualize and track network issues. You can create monitors to see detailed information about specific network segments for your Amazon workloads, including a view of the topology for individual network flows. After you create one or more monitors in Network Flow Monitor, you can observe performance and metrics, and explore historical data, to find anomalies.
To see the information provided by a monitor, on the Monitors tab, choose a monitor in the Monitors table. Then, choose one of the following tabs for more information: Overview, Historical explorer, or Monitor details.
Overview tab
On the Overview tab, you can review the following, for time periods that you specify. To see a broader or narrower range of historical information, including the NHI and traffic summary data, adjust the time period selection at the top of the page.
Metrics are shown only for traffic flows that Network Flow Monitor classifies into designated destination categories.
Metrics are displayed for flows between AZs (INTER_AZ), within AZs (INTRA_AZ),
between VPCs (INTER_VPC), toward Amazon S3 buckets (AMAZON_S3), and toward Amazon DynamoDB
(AMAZON_DYNAMODB). Flows are not classified into a destination category for scenarios such as the
following: when traffic goes to another Region or to the internet, or when traffic goes through a shared
resource in another account.
Network health indicator (NHI): NHI alerts you to whether there there were Amazon network issues for one or more of the network flows tracked by your monitor, during the time frame that you've selected for viewing performance metrics. NHI is a binary value, that is, 1 or 0, which is shown in the console as Degraded or Healthy.
NHI is shown as Degraded if there were issues with the portion of the Amazon network that any network flow in the monitor traversed, at any time during the time frame that you select.
Otherwise, NHI is shown as Healthy.
If the NHI is Degraded, you can view the Network health indicator bar graph for more information. The graph shows you when, during the selected time frame, there were Amazon network issues for the network flows tracked by your monitor.
Traffic summary: Observe overall metrics for the flows tracked by this monitor, for the time period that you've selected. You can see average round-trip time, sums (totals) of transmission timeouts and retransmissions, and the average amount of data transferred for the flows in the monitor. Be aware that RTT data can be sparse because RTT is not always calculated.
Historical explorer tab
On the Historical explorer tab, you can dive deep into information about
specific flows. You can review metrics and topologies for top contributor network flows for specified time
frames. In the tables of metrics, you can filter the data by different categories of
flows, such as flows between Availability Zones (INTER-AZ).
Metrics: View detailed information for the top contributors for each metric type that Network Flow Monitor aggregates data for. Separate tables of top contributors are provided for retransmission timeouts, retransmissions, round-trip time, and data transferred.
Topologies: To get an idea about where anomalies are occurring, you can view the path or topologyof a network flow. When you choose a specific metric in a metrics table, the topology for that flow is displayed below the table.
Monitor details tab
On the Monitor details tab, you can see details about the monitor, including the monitor state, the ARN, when it was created and last updated, and the flows that are included.
As part of your regular use of Network Flow Monitor, we recommend that you periodically review the data on the Workload insights page to determine if there are new flows that show metrics anomalies that you want to track more closely over time. When you see a set of flows on the Workload insights page that you want to see details about, select the flows and create a monitor for them.