Enable or turn off detailed monitoring for your instances
By default, your instance is enabled for basic monitoring. You can optionally enable detailed monitoring.
The following table highlights the differences between basic monitoring and detailed monitoring for instances.
Monitoring type | Description | Charges |
---|---|---|
Basic monitoring |
Only status check metrics are available in 1-minute periods. All other metrics are available in 5-minute periods. |
No charge. |
Detailed monitoring | All metrics, including status check metrics, are 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 user must have permission to use the MonitorInstances API action. To turn off detailed monitoring for an instance, your 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.
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.