Create a Metrics Insights alarm

To create an alarm on a Metrics Insights query using the console

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

2. In the navigation pane, choose Metrics, All metrics.

3. Choose the Query tab.

4. (Optional) To run a pre-built sample query, choose Add query and select the query to run. Or, you can choose Editor to edit the sample query and then choose Run to run the modified query.

5. To create your own query, you can use the Builder view, the Editor view, or a combination of both. You can switch between the two views anytime and see your work in progress in both views.

   In the Builder view, you can browse and select the metric namespace, metric name, filter, group, and order options. For each of these options, the query builder offers you a list of possible selections from your environment to choose from.

   In the Editor view, you can start writing your query. As you type, the editor offers suggestions based on the characters that you have typed so far.

   Important

   To set an alarm on a Metrics Insights query, the query must return a single time series. If it contains a GROUP BY statement, the GROUP BY statement must be wrapped inside a metric math expression that returns only one time series as the final result of the expression.

6. When you are satisfied with your query, choose Run.

7. Choose Create alarm.

8. Under Conditions, specify the following:

   1. For Whenever metric is, specify whether the metric must be greater than, less than, or equal to the threshold. Under than..., specify the threshold value.

   2. Choose Additional configuration. For Datapoints to alarm, specify how many evaluation periods (data points) must be in the ALARM state to trigger the alarm. If the two values here match, you create an alarm that goes to ALARM state if that many consecutive periods are breaching.

      To create an M out of N alarm, specify a lower number for the first value than you specify for the second value. For more information, see Evaluating an alarm.

   3. For Missing data treatment, choose how to have the alarm behave when some data points are missing. For more information, see Configuring how CloudWatch alarms treat missing data.

9. Choose Next.

10. Under Notification, select an SNS topic to notify when the alarm is in ALARM state, OK state, or INSUFFICIENT_DATA state.

    To have the alarm send multiple notifications for the same alarm state or for different alarm states, choose Add notification.

    To have the alarm not send notifications, choose Remove.

11. To have the alarm perform Auto Scaling, EC2, or Systems Manager actions, choose the appropriate button and choose the alarm state and action to perform. Alarms can perform Systems Manager actions only when they go into ALARM state. For more information about Systems Manager actions, see Configuring CloudWatch to create OpsItems from alarms and Incident creation.

    Note

    To create an alarm that performs an SSM Incident Manager action, you must have certain permissions. For more information, see Identity-based policy examples for Amazon Systems Manager Incident Manager.

12. When finished, choose Next.

13. Enter a name and description for the alarm. The name must contain only ASCII characters. Then choose Next.

14. Under Preview and create, confirm that the information and conditions are what you want, then choose Create alarm.

To create an alarm on a Metrics Insights query using the Amazon CLI

• Use the put-metric-alarm command and specify a Metrics Insights query in the metrics parameter. For example, the following command sets an alarm that goes into ALARM state if any of your instances go above 50% in CPU utilization.

  aws cloudwatch put-metric-alarm --alarm-name Metrics-Insights-alarm --evaluation-periods 1 --comparison-operator GreaterThanThreshold --metrics '[{"Id":"m1","Expression":"SELECT MAX(CPUUtilization) FROM SCHEMA(\"AWS/EC2\", InstanceId)", "Period":60}]' --threshold 50