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Monitoring concurrency

Lambda emits Amazon CloudWatch metrics to help you monitor concurrency for your functions. This topic explains these metrics and how to interpret them.

General concurrency metrics

Use the following metrics to monitor concurrency for your Lambda functions. The granularity for each metric is 1 minute.

Provisioned concurrency metrics

Use the following metrics to monitor Lambda functions using provisioned concurrency. The granularity for each metric is 1 minute.

ProvisionedConcurrentExecutions is not the same as the total number of provisioned concurrency that you allocate. For example, suppose you allocate 100 units of provisioned concurrency to a function version. During any given minute, if at most 50 out of those 100 execution environments were handling invocations simultaneously, then the value of MAX(ProvisionedConcurrentExecutions) is 50.

ProvisionedConcurrentInvocations differs from ProvisionedConcurrentExecutions in that ProvisionedConcurrentInvocations counts total number of invocations, while ProvisionedConcurrentExecutions counts number of active environments. To understand this distinction, consider the following scenario:

In this example, suppose that you receive 1 invocation per minute, and each invocation takes 2 minutes to complete. Each orange horizontal bar represents a single request. Suppose that you allocate 10 units of provisioned concurrency to this function, such that each request runs on provisioned concurrency.

In between minutes 0 and 1, Request 1 comes in. At minute 1, the value for MAX(ProvisionedConcurrentExecutions) is 1, since at most 1 execution environment was active during the past minute. The value for SUM(ProvisionedConcurrentInvocations) is also 1, since 1 new request came in during the past minute.

In between minutes 1 and 2, Request 2 comes in, and Request 1 continues to run. At minute 2, the value for MAX(ProvisionedConcurrentExecutions) is 2, since at most 2 execution environments were active during the past minute. However, the value for SUM(ProvisionedConcurrentInvocations) is 1, since only 1 new request came in during the past minute. This metric behavior continues until the end of the example.

For example, suppose you provision 100 units of provisioned concurrency to a function version. During any given minute, if at most 60 out of those 100 execution environments were handling invocations simultaneously, then the value of MAX(ProvisionedConcurrentExecutions) is 60, and the value of MAX(ProvisionedConcurrentUtilization) is 0.6.

A high value for ProvisionedConcurrencySpilloverInvocations may indicate that you need to allocate additional provisioned concurrency for your function. Alternatively, you can configure Application Auto Scaling to handle automatic scaling of provisioned concurrency based on pre-defined thresholds.

Conversely, consistently low values for ProvisionedConcurrencyUtilization may indicate that you over-allocated provisioned concurrency for your function.

Working with the ClaimedAccountConcurrency metric

Lambda uses the ClaimedAccountConcurrency metric to determine how much concurrency your account is available for on-demand invocations. Lambda calculates ClaimedAccountConcurrency using the following formula:

ClaimedAccountConcurrency = UnreservedConcurrentExecutions + (allocated concurrency)

UnreservedConcurrentExecutions is the number of active concurrent invocations that are using unreserved concurrency. Allocated concurrency is the sum of the following two parts (substituting RC as "reserved concurrency" and PC as "provisioned concurrency"):

Lambda uses the ClaimedAccountConcurrency metric, rather than ConcurrentExecutions, to determine how much concurrency is available for on-demand invocations. While the ConcurrentExecutions metric is useful for tracking the number of active concurrent invocations, it doesn't always reflect your true concurrency availability. This is because Lambda also considers reserved concurrency and provisioned concurrency to determine availability.

To illustrate ClaimedAccountConcurrency, consider a scenario where you configure a lot of reserved concurrency and provisioned concurrency across your functions that go largely unused. In the following example, assume that your account concurrency limit is 1,000, and you have two main functions in your account: function-orange and function-blue. You allocate 600 units of reserved concurrency for function-orange. You allocate 200 units of provisioned concurrency for function-blue. Suppose that over time, you deploy additional functions and observe the following traffic pattern:

In the previous diagram, the black lines indicate the actual concurrency use over time, and the red line indicates the value of ClaimedAccountConcurrency over time. Throughout this scenario, ClaimedAccountConcurrency is 800 at minimum, despite low actual concurrency utilization across your functions. This is because you allocated 800 total units of concurrency for function-orange and function-blue. From Lambda's perspective, you have "claimed" this concurrency for use, so you effectively have only 200 units of concurrency remaining for other functions.

For this scenario, allocated concurrency is 800 in the ClaimedAccountConcurrency formula. We can then derive the value of ClaimedAccountConcurrency at various points in the diagram:

Setting up the ClaimedAccountConcurrency metric in CloudWatch

Lambda emits the ClaimedAccountConcurrency metric in CloudWatch. Use this metric along with the value of SERVICE_QUOTA(ConcurrentExecutions) to get the percent utilization of concurrency in your account, as shown in the following formula:

Utilization = (ClaimedAccountConcurrency/SERVICE_QUOTA(ConcurrentExecutions)) * 100%

The following screenshot illustrates how you can graph this formula in CloudWatch. The green claim_utilization line represents the concurrency utilization in this account, which is at around 40%:

The previous screenshot also includes a CloudWatch alarm that goes into ALARM state when the concurrency utilization exceeds 70%. You can use the ClaimedAccountConcurrency metric along with similar alarms to proactively determine when you might need to request a higher account concurrency limit.