Enable or turn off detailed monitoring for your instances - Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud
Required IAM permissionsEnable detailed monitoringTurn off detailed monitoring

Enable or turn off detailed monitoring for your instances

By default, your instance is enabled for basic monitoring. You can optionally enable detailed monitoring. After you enable detailed monitoring, the Amazon EC2 console displays monitoring graphs with a 1-minute period for the instance.

The following describes the data interval and charge for basic and detailed monitoring for instances.

Monitoring type Description Charges
Basic monitoring Data is available automatically in 5-minute periods. No charge
Detailed monitoring Data is available in 1-minute periods. To get this level of data, you must specifically enable it for the instance. For the instances where you've enabled detailed monitoring, you can also get aggregated data across groups of similar instances. You are charged per metric that is sent to CloudWatch. You are not charged for data storage. For more information, see Paid tier and Example 1 - EC2 Detailed Monitoring on the Amazon CloudWatch pricing page.

Required IAM permissions

To enable detailed monitoring for an instance, your IAM user must have permission to use the MonitorInstances API action. To turn off detailed monitoring for an instance, your IAM user must have permission to use the UnmonitorInstances API action.

Enable detailed monitoring

You can enable detailed monitoring on an instance as you launch it or after the instance is running or stopped. Enabling detailed monitoring on an instance does not affect the monitoring of the EBS volumes attached to the instance. For more information, see Amazon CloudWatch metrics for Amazon EBS.

New console

To enable detailed monitoring for an existing instance

  1. Open the Amazon EC2 console at https://console.aws.amazon.com/ec2/.

  2. In the navigation pane, choose Instances.

  3. Select the instance and choose Actions, Monitoring, Manage detailed monitoring.

  4. On the Detailed monitoring detail page, for Detailed monitoring, select the Enable check box.

  5. Choose Save.

To enable detailed monitoring when launching an instance

When launching an instance using the AWS Management Console, select the Monitoring check box on the Configure Instance Details page.

Old console

To enable detailed monitoring for an existing instance

  1. Open the Amazon EC2 console at https://console.aws.amazon.com/ec2/.

  2. In the navigation pane, choose Instances.

  3. Select the instance and choose Actions, CloudWatch Monitoring, Enable Detailed Monitoring.

  4. In the Enable Detailed Monitoring dialog box, choose Yes, Enable.

  5. Choose Close.

To enable detailed monitoring when launching an instance (console)

When launching an instance using the AWS Management Console, select the Monitoring check box on the Configure Instance Details page.

AWS CLI

To enable detailed monitoring for an existing instance

Use the following monitor-instances command to enable detailed monitoring for the specified instances. 

aws ec2 monitor-instances --instance-ids i-1234567890abcdef0

To enable detailed monitoring when launching an instance

Use the run-instances command with the --monitoring flag to enable detailed monitoring. 

aws ec2 run-instances --image-id ami-09092360 --monitoring Enabled=true...

Turn off detailed monitoring

You can turn off detailed monitoring on an instance as you launch it or after the instance is running or stopped.

New console

To turn off detailed monitoring

  1. Open the Amazon EC2 console at https://console.aws.amazon.com/ec2/.

  2. In the navigation pane, choose Instances.

  3. Select the instance and choose Actions, Monitoring, Manage detailed monitoring.

  4. On the Detailed monitoring detail page, for Detailed monitoring, clear the Enable check box.

  5. Choose Save.

Old console

To turn off detailed monitoring

  1. Open the Amazon EC2 console at https://console.aws.amazon.com/ec2/.

  2. In the navigation pane, choose Instances.

  3. Select the instance and choose Actions, CloudWatch Monitoring, Disable Detailed Monitoring.

  4. In the Disable Detailed Monitoring dialog box, choose Yes, Disable.

  5. Choose Close.

AWS CLI

To turn off detailed monitoring

Use the following unmonitor-instances command to turn off detailed monitoring for the specified instances. 

aws ec2 unmonitor-instances --instance-ids i-1234567890abcdef0