CloudWatch Custom Metric Quick Start

08 Oct 2015 • AWS

What is CloudWatch Custom Metrics

Setting up CloudWatch Custom Metrics on your instance allows you to monitor resources in addition to the default metrics of CPU Utilization, Disk I/O and Network I/O provided by default. Custom Metrics includes the following additional metrics:

memory-used

memory-utilization

memory-available

swap-utilization

swap-used

disk-space-utilization

disk-space-used

disk-space-availability

These steps are written specifically for Ubuntu. The steps vary for different distributions.

  1. SSH into your EC2 instance
  2. Install the required dependencies: <ul style="list-style-type: square;">
  3. sudo apt-get install unzip && apt-get install libwww-perl && apt-get install libcrypt-ssleay-perl apt-get install libswitch-perl 
    4. </ul>
  4. Download the monitoring scripts: <ul style="list-style-type: square;">
  5. wget http://aws-cloudwatch.s3.amazonaws.com/downloads/CloudWatchMonitoringScripts-1.2.1.zip 
    6. </ul>
  6. Extract the contents and remove the zip file: <ul style="list-style-type: square;">
  7. unzip CloudWatchMonitoringScripts-v1.1.0.zip
    rm CloudWatchMonitoringScripts-v1.1.0.zip 
    8. </ul>
  8. Add access key and secret key to the configuration file. Edit the awscreds.template located inside aws-scripts-mon directory file to add your Access Key and Secret Key. <ul style="list-style-type: square;">
  9. cd aws-scripts-monecho "AWSAccessKeyId=****" > awscreds.template
    echo "AWSSecretKey=****" >> awscreds.template 
    10. </ul>
  10. Set environment variable & export the path of the credential file <ul style="list-style-type: square;">
  11. path=$(pwd) ; export AWS_CREDENTIAL_FILE=${path}/awscreds.template 
    12. </ul>
  12. Create a cronjob. Add the monitoring script to the crontab. Run it every 5 minutes or choose a time cycle according to your requirements. <ul style="list-style-type: square;">
  13. echo "*/5 * * * * ~/aws-scripts-mon/mon-put-instance-data.pl --mem-util --mem-used --mem-avail --swap-util --swap-used --disk-path=/ --disk-space-util --disk-space-used --disk-space-avail" >> /etc/crontab 
    14. </ul>
  14. Check the metrics on the AWS console

Head over to the CloudWatch console to check the metrics. Goto: https://console.aws.amazon.com/cloudwatch/

Click on Linux System under Metrics. Then click on the instance ID that you want to check the metrics of.

I have largely automated the setup process in the following script. The distributions currently supported are Amazon Linux, Ubuntu and SUSE Linux.

Download the script here: https://github.com/slashr/CloudWatch-Deployment

 aws  cloudwatch  custom metrics

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