Create a CloudWatch alarm for an instance
You can create a CloudWatch alarm that monitors CloudWatch metrics for one of your instances. CloudWatch
will automatically send you a notification when the metric reaches a threshold you specify.
You can create a CloudWatch alarm using the Amazon EC2 console, or using the more advanced options
provided by the CloudWatch console.
To create an alarm using the CloudWatch console
For examples, see Creating Amazon CloudWatch
Alarms in the Amazon CloudWatch User Guide.
- New console
-
To create an alarm using the Amazon EC2 console
Open the Amazon EC2 console at
https://console.aws.amazon.com/ec2/.
-
In the navigation pane, choose Instances.
-
Select the instance and choose Actions, Monitor and troubleshoot, Manage CloudWatch alarms.
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On the Manage CloudWatch alarms detail page, under Add or edit alarm, select Create an alarm.
For Alarm notification, choose whether to turn the toggle on or off to configure Amazon Simple Notification Service (Amazon SNS) notifications. Enter an existing Amazon SNS topic or enter a name to create a new topic.
For Alarm action, choose whether to turn the toggle on or off to specify an action to take when the alarm is triggered. Select an action from the dropdown.
For Alarm thresholds, select the metric and criteria for the alarm. For example, you can leave the default settings for Group samples by (Average) and Type of data to sample (CPU utilization). For Alarm when, choose >= and enter 0.80
. For Consecutive period, enter 1
. For Period, select 5 minutes.
(Optional) For Sample metric data, choose Add to dashboard.
Choose Create.
- Old console
-
To create an alarm using the Amazon EC2 console
Open the Amazon EC2 console at
https://console.aws.amazon.com/ec2/.
-
In the navigation pane, choose Instances.
-
Select the instance.
-
On the Monitoring tab located at the bottom of the page, choose
Create Alarm. Or, from the Actions dropdown,
choose CloudWatch Monitoring, Add/Edit
Alarm.
-
In the Create Alarm dialog box, do the following:
-
Choose create topic. For Send a notification
to, enter a name for the SNS topic. For With these
recipients, enter one or more email addresses to receive
notification.
-
Specify the metric and the criteria for the policy. For example, you can leave the
default settings for Whenever (Average of CPU Utilization). For
Is, choose >=
and enter 80
percent. For For at least, enter 1
consecutive
period of 5 Minutes
.
-
Choose Create Alarm.
You can edit your CloudWatch alarm settings from the Amazon EC2 console or the CloudWatch console. If you
want to delete your alarm, you can do so from the CloudWatch console. For more information, see
Editing or deleting a
CloudWatch alarm in the Amazon CloudWatch User Guide.