Actions

AWS Data Pipeline actions are steps that a pipeline component takes when certain events occur, such as success, failure, or late activities. The event field of an activity refers to an action, such as a reference to snsalarm in the onLateAction field of EmrActivity.

AWS Data Pipeline relies on Amazon SNS notifications as the primary way to indicate the status of pipelines and their components in an unattended manner. For more information, see Amazon SNS. In addition to SNS notifications, you can use the AWS Data Pipeline console and CLI to obtain pipeline status information.

AWS Data Pipeline supports the following actions:

SnsAlarm

An action that sends an SNS notification to a topic based on onSuccess, OnFail, and onLateAction events.

Terminate

An action that triggers the cancellation of a pending or unfinished activity, resource, or data node. You cannot terminate actions that include onSuccess, OnFail, or onLateAction.

Proactively Monitoring Pipelines

The best way to detect problems is to monitor your pipelines proactively from the start. You can configure pipeline components to inform you of certain situations or events, such as when a pipeline component fails or doesn't begin by its scheduled start time. AWS Data Pipeline makes it easy to configure notifications by providing event fields on pipeline components that you can associate with Amazon SNS notifications, such as onSuccess, OnFail, and onLateAction.