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Enable Enhanced Container Insights (Classic) from the console - Amazon CloudWatch
PrerequisitesEnable Enhanced Container Insights (Classic)Verify that data appears in CloudWatchNext steps

Enable Enhanced Container Insights (Classic) from the console

You can enable Enhanced Container Insights (Classic) directly from the Amazon EKS console. This approach installs the Amazon CloudWatch Observability add-on (version prior to v6.2.0) with the Classic metric pipeline. This is ideal if you prefer a UI-driven experience and want to enable observability without writing infrastructure code or running CLI commands.

Recommendation

For new deployments, we recommend OTel Container Insights (Recommended), which uses add-on version 6.2.0 or later with the OTel-based pipeline.

Prerequisites

Before you enable Enhanced Container Insights (Classic) from the console, verify that you meet the following requirements.

  • You are signed in to the Amazon EKS console.

  • An existing Amazon EKS cluster running Kubernetes version 1.25 or later.

  • The amazon-cloudwatch-observability add-on version must be prior to v6.2.0 (for example, v5.4.0).

  • IAM permissions: eks:DescribeCluster, eks:UpdateClusterConfig, eks:ListAddons, eks:CreateAddon, eks:DescribeAddon, iam:AttachRolePolicy, and iam:CreateServiceLinkedRole.

  • The node IAM role must have the CloudWatchAgentServerPolicy managed policy attached.

  • The cluster is in ACTIVE state.

Enable Enhanced Container Insights (Classic)

Use the following procedure to enable Enhanced Container Insights (Classic) from the Amazon EKS console.

To enable Enhanced Container Insights (Classic) by using the console

  1. Open the Amazon EKS console at https://console.aws.amazon.com/eks/.

  2. Choose Clusters, and then choose your cluster name.

  3. Choose the Observability tab.

  4. Next to Container Insights status, choose Manage.

  5. Select Enhanced Container Insights, and then choose Enable.

The console installs the add-on with the Classic configuration. Metrics appear in the ContainerInsights namespace within 3 to 5 minutes.

Verify that data appears in CloudWatch

After you enable Enhanced Container Insights (Classic), data appears in CloudWatch within 3 to 5 minutes.

To verify Container Insights data

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

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

  3. Choose the ContainerInsights namespace.

  4. Verify that metrics such as pod_cpu_utilization and node_memory_utilization appear for your cluster.

Next steps

After you enable Enhanced Container Insights (Classic), you can explore the following topics.