Using Amazon CloudWatch dashboards

Amazon CloudWatch dashboards are customizable home pages in the CloudWatch console that you can use to monitor your resources in a single view, even those resources that are spread across different Regions. You can use CloudWatch dashboards to create customized views of the metrics and alarms for your AWS resources.

With dashboards, you can create the following:

• A single view for selected metrics and alarms to help you assess the health of your resources and applications across one or more Regions. You can select the color used for each metric on each graph, so that you can easily track the same metric across multiple graphs.

• An operational playbook that provides guidance for team members during operational events about how to respond to specific incidents.

• A common view of critical resource and application measurements that can be shared by team members for faster communication flow during operational events.

If you have multiple AWS accounts, you can set up CloudWatch cross-account observability and then create rich cross-account dashboards in your monitoring accounts. You can seamlessly search, visualize, and analyze your metrics, logs, and traces without account boundaries.

With CloudWatch cross-account observability, you can do the following in a dashboard in a monitoring account:

• Search, view, and create graphs of metrics that reside in source accounts. A single graph can include metrics from multiple accounts.

• Create alarms in the monitoring account that watch metrics in source accounts.

• View the log events from log groups located in source accounts, and run CloudWatch Logs Insights queries of log groups in source accounts. A single CloudWatch Logs Insights query in a monitoring account can query multiple log groups in multiple source accounts at once.

• View nodes from source accounts in a trace map in X-Ray. You can then filter the map to specific source accounts.

When you are signed in to a monitoring account, a blue Monitoring account badge appears at the top right of every page that supports CloudWatch cross-account observability functionality.

For more information about setting up CloudWatch cross-account observability, see CloudWatch cross-account observability.

You can create dashboards from the console or using the AWS CLI or PutDashboard API operation. You can add dashboards to a favorites list, where you can access not only your favorited dashboards, but also your recently visited dashboards. For more information, see Add a dashboard to your favorites list.

To access CloudWatch dashboards, you need one of the following:

• The AdministratorAccess policy

• The CloudWatchFullAccess policy

• A custom policy that includes one or more of these specific permissions:

  • cloudwatch:GetDashboard and cloudwatch:ListDashboards to be able to view dashboards

  • cloudwatch:PutDashboard to be able to create or modify dashboards

  • cloudwatch:DeleteDashboards to be able to delete dashboards

Topics

• Creating a dashboard
• Creating a cross-account cross-Region dashboard with the console
• Create a cross-account cross-Region dashboard programmatically
• Creating a graph with metrics from different accounts and Regions
• Adding an alarm from a different account to a cross-account dashboard
• Creating dashboards with variables
• Using widgets on dashboards
• Sharing dashboards
• Using live data
• Viewing and animated dashboard
• Add a dashboard to your favorites list
• Changing the period override setting or refresh interval
• Changing the time range or time zone format

Create a cross-account cross-Region dashboard programmatically

You can use the AWS APIs and SDKs to create dashboards programmatically. For more information, see PutDashboard.

To enable cross-account cross-Region dashboards, we have added new parameters to the dashboard body structure, as shown in the following table and examples. For more information about overall dashboard body structure, see Dashboard Body Structure and Syntax.

Parameter	Use	Scope	Default
accountId	Specifies the ID of the account where the widget or the metric is located.	Widget or metric	Account that is currently logged in
region	Specifies the Region of the metric.	Widget or metric	Current Region selected in the console

The following examples illustrate the JSON source for widgets in a cross-account cross-Region dashboard.

This example sets the accountId field to the ID of the sharing account at the widget level. This specifies that all metrics in this widget will come from that sharing account and Region.

{
  "widgets": [
    {
          ...
          "properties": {
        "metrics": [
                   …
        ],
        "accountId": "111122223333",
        "region": "us-east-1"
      }
    }
  ]
}          
                        
                    

This example sets the accountId field differently at the level of each metric. In this example, the different metrics in this metric math expression come from different sharing accounts and different Regions.

{
  "widgets": [
    {
          ...
          "properties": {
        "metrics": [
          [
            {
              "expression": "SUM(METRICS())",
              "label": "[avg: ${AVG}] Expression1",
              "id": "e1",
              "stat": "Sum"
            }
          ],
          [
            "AWS/EC2",
            "CPUUtilization",
            {
              "id": "m2",
              "accountId": "5555666677778888",
              "region": "us-east-1",
              "label": "[avg: ${AVG}] ApplicationALabel "
            }
          ],
          [
            ".",
            ".",
            {
              "id": "m1",
              "accountId": "9999000011112222",
              "region": "eu-west-1",
              "label": "[avg: ${AVG}] ApplicationBLabel"
            }
          ]
        ],
        "view": "timeSeries",
        "region": "us-east-1", ---> home region of the metric. Not present in above example 
              "stacked": false,
        "stat": "Sum",
        "period": 300,
        "title": "Cross account example"
      }
    }
  ]
}                        
                        
                    

This example shows an alarm widget.

{
  "type": "metric",
  "x": 6,
  "y": 0,
  "width": 6,
  "height": 6,
  "properties": {
    "accountID": "111122223333",
    "title": "over50",
    "annotations": {
      "alarms": [
        "arn:aws:cloudwatch:us-east-1:379642911888:alarm:over50"
      ]
    },
    "view": "timeSeries",
    "stacked": false
  }
}                        
                    
                    

This example is for a CloudWatch Logs Insights widget.

{
  "type": "log",
  "x": 0,
  "y": 6,
  "width": 24,
  "height": 6,
  "properties": {
    "query": "SOURCE 'route53test' | fields @timestamp, @message\n| sort @timestamp desc\n| limit 20",
    "accountId": "111122223333",
    "region": "us-east-1",
    "stacked": false,
    "view": "table"
  }
}                        
                        
                    

Another way to create dashboards programmatically is to first create one in the AWS Management Console, and then copy the JSON source of this dashboard. To do so, load the dashboard and choose Actions, View/edit source. You can then copy this dashboard JSON to use as a template to create similar dashboards.

Creating a graph with metrics from different accounts and Regions in a CloudWatch dashboard

1. Sign in to the monitoring account.

2. Open the CloudWatch console at https://console.aws.amazon.com/cloudwatch/.

3. In the navigation pane, choose Metrics, and then choose All metrics.

4. Select the account and Region that you want to add metrics from. You can select your account and Region from the account and Region dropdown menus near the top-right of the screen.

5. Add the metrics you want to the graph. For more information, see Graphing metrics.

6. Repeat steps 4-5 to add metrics from other accounts and Regions.

7. (Optional) Choose the Graphed metrics tab and add a metric math function that uses the metrics that you have chosen. For more information, see Using math expressions with CloudWatch metrics.

   You can also set up a single graph to include multiple SEARCH functions. Each search can refer to a different account or Region.

8. When you are finished with the graph, choose Actions, Add to dashboard.

   Select your cross-account dashboard, and choose Add to dashboard.