Getting started with Amazon CloudWatch - Amazon CloudWatch
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Getting started with Amazon CloudWatch

Open the CloudWatch console at https://console.amazonaws.cn/cloudwatch/.

The CloudWatch overview home page appears.

The overview displays the following items, refreshed automatically.

  • Alarms by Amazon service displays a list of Amazon services you use in your account, along with the state of alarms in those services. Next to that, two or four alarms in your account are displayed. The number depends on how many Amazon services you use. The alarms shown are those in the ALARM state or those that most recently changed state.

    These upper areas help you quickly assess the health of your Amazon services, by seeing the alarm states in every service and the alarms that most recently changed state. This helps you monitor and quickly diagnose issues.

  • Below these areas is the default dashboard, if one exists. The default dashboard is a custom dashboard that you have created and named CloudWatch-Default. This is a convenient way for you to add metrics about your own custom services or applications to the overview page, or to bring forward additional key metrics from Amazon services that you most want to monitor.

Note

The automatic dashboards on the CloudWatch home page display only information from the current account, even if the account is a monitoring account set up for CloudWatch cross-account observability. For information about creating custom cross-account dashboards, see CloudWatch cross-account observability dashboard.

From this overview, you can see a cross-service dashboard of metrics from multiple Amazon service, or focus your view to a specific resource group or a specific Amazon service. This enables you to narrow your view to a subset of resources in which you are interested. For more information, see the following sections.

To see the automatic pre-built dashboard for a single service

  1. Open the CloudWatch console at https://console.amazonaws.cn/cloudwatch/.

    The home page appears.

  2. In the left navigation pane, choose Dashboards.

  3. Choose the Automatic dashboards tab, then choose the service that you want to see.

  4. To switch to viewing the alarms for this service, select the check box for In alarm, Insufficient data, or OK near the top of the screen where the service name is currently displayed.

  5. When viewing metrics, you can focus on a particular metric in several ways:

    1. To see more details about the metrics in any graph, hover on the graph, and choose the actions icon, View in metrics.

      The graph appears in a new tab, with the relevant metrics listed below the graph. You can customize your view of this graph, changing the metrics and resources shown, the statistic, the period, and other factors to get a better understanding of the current situation.

    2. You can view log events from the time range shown in the graph. This may help you discover events that happened in your infrastructure that are causing an unexpected change in your metrics.

      To see the log events, hover on the graph, and choose the actions icon, View in logs.

      The CloudWatch Logs view appears in a new tab, displaying a list of your log groups. To see the log events in one of these log groups that occurred during the time range shown in the original graph, choose that log group.

  6. When viewing alarms, you can focus on a particular alarm in several ways:

    1. To see more details about an alarm, hover on the alarm, and choose the actions icon, View in alarms.

      The alarms view appears in a new tab, displaying a list of your alarms, along with details about the chosen alarm. To see the history for this alarm, choose the History tab.

  7. Alarms are always refreshed one time per minute. To refresh the view, choose the refresh icon (two curved arrows) at the top right of the screen. To change the automatic refresh rate for items on the screen other than alarms, choose the down arrow next to the refresh icon and choose a refresh rate. You can also choose to turn off automatic refresh.

  8. To change the time range shown in all graphs and alarms currently displayed, next to Time range at the top of the screen, choose the range. To select from more time range options than those displayed by default, choose custom.

  9. To return to the cross-service dashboard, choose Overview in the list at the top of the screen that currently shows the service you are focusing on.

    Alternatively, from any view, you can choose CloudWatch at the top of the screen to clear all filters and return to the overview page.

You can switch to the Cross-service dashboard screen and interact with dashboards for all of the Amazon services that you're using. The CloudWatch Console displays your dashboards in alphabetical order and shows one or two key metrics on each dashboard.

Note

If you're using five or more Amazon services, the CloudWatch Console won't display the Cross-service dashboard on the Overview screen.

To open the Cross-service dashboard

  1. Open the CloudWatch console at https://console.amazonaws.cn/cloudwatch/.

    You're directed to the Overview screen.

  2. From the Overview screen, select the dropdown that reads Overview, and then choose Cross service dashboard.

    You're directed to the Cross service dashboard screen.

  3. (Optional) If you're using the original interface, scroll to the section Cross-service dashboard, and then choose View Cross-service dashboard.

    You're directed to the Cross-service dashboard screen.

  4. You can focus on a particular service in two ways:

    1. To see more key metrics for a service, choose its name from the list at the top of the screen, where Cross service dashboard is currently shown. Or, you can choose View Service dashboard next to the service name.

      An automatic dashboard for that service is displayed, showing more metrics for that service. Additionally, for some services, the bottom of the service dashboard displays resources related to that service. You can choose one of those resources to that service console and focus further on that resource.

    2. To see all the alarms related to a service, choose the button on the right of the screen next to that service name. The text on this button indicates how many alarms you have created in this service, and whether any are in the ALARM state.

      When the alarms are displayed, multiple alarms that have similar settings (such as dimensions, threshold, or period) may be shown in a single graph.

      You can then view details about an alarm and see the alarm history. To do so, hover on the alarm graph, and choose the actions icon, View in alarms.

      The alarms view appears in a new browser tab, displaying a list of your alarms, along with details about the chosen alarm. To see the history for this alarm, choose the History tab.

  5. You can focus on resources in a particular resource group. To do so, choose the resource group from the list at the top of the page where All resources is displayed.

    For more information, see See a pre-built dashboard for a resource group.

  6. To change the time range shown in all graphs and alarms currently displayed, select the range you want next to Time range at the top of the screen. Choose custom to select from more time range options than those displayed by default.

  7. Alarms are always refreshed once a minute. To refresh the view, choose the refresh icon (two curved arrows) at the top right of the screen. To change the automatic refresh rate for items on the screen other than alarms, choose the down arrow next to the refresh icon and choose the refresh rate you want. You can also choose to turn off automatic refresh.

Remove a service from the cross-service dashboard

You can prevent a service's metrics from appearing in the cross-service dashboard. This helps you focus your cross-service dashboard on the services you most want to monitor.

If you remove a service from the cross-service dashboard, the alarms for that service still appear in the views of your alarms.

To remove a service's metrics from the cross-service dashboard

  1. Open the CloudWatch console at https://console.amazonaws.cn/cloudwatch/.

    The home page appears.

  2. At the top of the page, under Overview, choose the service you want to remove.

    The view changes to show metrics from only that service.

  3. Choose Actions, then clear the check box next to Show on cross service dashboard.

You can focus your view to display metrics and alarms from a single resource group. Using resource groups enables you to use tags to organize projects, focus on a subset of your architecture, or distinguish between your production and development environments. They also enable you to focus on each of these resource groups on the CloudWatch overview. For more information, see What Is Amazon Resource Groups?.

When you focus on a resource group, the display changes to show only the services where you have tagged resources as part of this resource group. The recent alarms area shows only the alarms that are associated with resources that are part of the resource group. Additionally, if you have created a dashboard with the name CloudWatch-Default-ResourceGroupName, it is displayed in the Default dashboard area.

You can drill down further by focusing on both a single Amazon service and a resource group at the same time. The following procedure explains only how to focus on a resource group.

To focus on a single resource group

  1. Open the CloudWatch console at https://console.amazonaws.cn/cloudwatch/.

  2. At the top of the page, where All resources is displayed, choose a resource group.

  3. To see more metrics related to this resource group, near the bottom of the screen, choose View cross service dashboard.

    The cross-service dashboard appears, showing only the services related to this resource group. For each service, one or two key metrics are displayed.

  4. To change the time range shown in all graphs and alarms currently displayed, for Time range at the top of the screen, select a range. To select from more time range options than those displayed by default, choose custom.

  5. Alarms are always refreshed one time per minute. To refresh the view, choose the refresh icon (two curved arrows) at the top right of the screen. To change the automatic refresh rate for items on the screen other than alarms, choose the down arrow next to the refresh icon and choose a refresh rate. You can also choose to turn off automatic refresh.

  6. To return to showing information about all the resources in your account, near the top of the screen where the name of the resource group is currently displayed, choose All resources.