AWS Backup metrics with Amazon CloudWatch

CloudWatch Dashboard

Your AWS Backup console includes a dashboard to see metrics on completed or failed backup, copy, and restore jobs. Within this dashboard, you can view job status by time period, customized to the time frame you desire.

TO ACCESS THE DASHBOARD

1. Open the AWS Backup console at https://console.aws.amazon.com/backup.

2. Select Dashboard in the left-hand navigation pane.

VIEW AND UNDERSTAND THE DASHBOARD

The CloudWatch dashboard displays several widgets. Each widget shows job metrics by count. Each widget shows several line graphs. Each line corresponds to a protected resource (if you do not see an expected resource displayed, ensure the resource is turned on in Settings). The displays do not show in-progress jobs.

The y-axis (vertical values) shows the count. The x-axis (horizontal values) shows points in time. If there are no data points to visualize in the selected job status, the value will be set to 0 with a horizontal line on the x-axis. The legend showing the resources will still be visible.

The metrics display account-specific and Region-specific information related to the current login. To see other accounts or Regions, you must login under the chosen account.

CUSTOMIZE THE DASHBOARD

By default, the displayed time frame is one week. Along the top menu, there are options for redefining the displayed time frame. You can choose from among 1 hour, 3 hours, 12 hours, 1 day, 3 days, and 1 week. Additionally, you can select Custom to specify a different value. Customization will temporarily change the current view to your specifications.

You can hover over a widget, which will display a Enlarge button in the top right of the widget. Click on Enlarge to open the widget in full-screen view. In full screen, there are more options for customizing the graph display, such as changing the period (the time between every data point). Any changes will not be retained once the full-screen view is closed.

To view only one resource type at a time, click on the label text of the resource type you wish to view in the graph legend. This will deselect other all resource types. To reverse this, click on a resource type color box in the legend. To go back to default view of all resource types with all the labels selected, click again on the label text of any resource type selected.

Clicking the three vertical dots in the top right corner of a widgets opens up a drop down menu with options to refresh, enlarge, view in metrics and view in logs. “View in metrics” opens up the metric used in the widget in CloudWatch console. You can make any changes to the widget there and add the widget to a custom dashboard in CloudWatch dashboard. Any changes you make in the CloudWatch dashboard will not be reflected on the dashboard in AWS Backup Console. “View as logs” opens up the logs view page in CloudWatch console.

To add widgets displayed to your own custom CloudWatch dashboard, click on the Add to dashboard button located on the top right of the dashboard. This will open up the CloudWatch console where you can select in which custom dashboard to add all the six widgets.

For more information, see Using Amazon CloudWatch metrics.

Metrics with CloudWatch

You can use CloudWatch to monitor AWS Backup metrics. The AWS/Backup namespace allows you to track the following metrics. AWS Backup emits updated metrics to CloudWatch every 5 minutes.

The purpose of this documentation page is to provide you with the reference materials to use CloudWatch to monitor AWS Backup. To learn how to monitor a metric using CloudWatch, see the blog Amazon CloudWatch Events and Metrics for AWS Backup or Focus on Metrics and Alarms in a Single AWS Service in the CloudWatch User Guide. To set alarms, see Using Amazon CloudWatch Alarms in the CloudWatch User Guide.

Category	Metrics	Example dimensions	Example use case
Jobs	Number of backup, restore, and copy jobs across each state, including CREATED, PENDING, RUNNING, ABORTED, COMPLETED, FAILED, and EXPIRED. Different job types have different available states.	Resource type, vault name. The vault name of copy jobs is that of their destination vault.	Monitor the number of failed backup jobs within one or more specific backup vaults. When there are more than five failed jobs within 1 hour, send an email or SMS using Amazon SNS or open a ticket to the engineering team to investigate. Reporting criteria: There is a nonzero value
Recovery points	Number of warm and cold recovery points across each state: MODIFIED, COMPLETED, PARTIAL, EXPIRED, DELETED.	Resource type, vault name.	Track the number of deleted recovery points for your Amazon EBS volumes, and separately track the number of warm and cold recovery points in each backup vault. Reporting criteria: There is a nonzero value

The following table lists all the metrics available to you.

Metric	Description
NumberOfBackupJobsCreated	The number of backup jobs that AWS Backup created.
NumberOfBackupJobsPending	The number of backup jobs about to run in AWS Backup.
NumberOfBackupJobsRunning	The number of backup jobs currently running in AWS Backup.
NumberOfBackupJobsAborted	The number of user cancelled backup jobs.
NumberOfBackupJobsCompleted	The number of backup jobs that AWS Backup finished.
NumberOfBackupJobsFailed	The number of backup jobs that AWS Backup scheduled but did not start. Often caused by scheduling a backup job during or 1 hour before a database resource or 4 hours before or during a Amazon FSx maintenance window or automated backup window and not using AWS Backup to perform continuous backup for point-in-time restores. See Point-in-Time Recovery for a list of supported services and instructions on how to use AWS Backup to take continuous backups, or reschedule your backup jobs.
NumberOfBackupJobsExpired	The number of backup jobs that AWS Backup attempted to delete based on your backup retention lifecycle, but could not delete. You are billed for the storage that expired backups consume and should delete them manually.
NumberOfCopyJobsCreated	The number of cross-account and cross-Region copy jobs that AWS Backup created.
NumberOfCopyJobsRunning	The number of cross-account and cross-Region copy jobs currently running in AWS Backup.
NumberOfCopyJobsCompleted	The number of cross-account and cross-Region copy jobs that AWS Backup finished.
NumberOfCopyJobsFailed	The number of cross-account and cross-Region copy jobs that AWS Backup attempted but could not complete.
NumberOfRestoreJobsPending	The number of restore jobs about to run in AWS Backup.
NumberOfRestoreJobsRunning	The number of restore jobs currently running in AWS Backup.
NumberOfRestoreJobsCompleted	The number of restore jobs that AWS Backup finished.
NumberOfRestoreJobsFailed	The number of restore jobs that AWS Backup attempted but could not complete.
NumberOfRecoveryPointsCompleted	The number of recovery points that AWS Backup created.
NumberOfRecoveryPointsPartial	The number of recovery points that AWS Backup started to create but could not finish. AWS retries the process later, but because the retry occurs at the later time, it retains the partial recovery point.
NumberOfRecoveryPointsExpired	The number of recovery points that AWS Backup attempted to delete based on your backup retention lifecycle, but could not delete. You are billed for the storage that expired backups consume and should delete them manually.
NumberOfRecoveryPointsDeleting	The number of recovery points that AWS Backup is deleting.
NumberOfRecoveryPointsCold	The number of recovery points that AWS Backup tiered to cold storage.

More dimensions are available beyond those listed in the table. To view all the dimensions of a metric, type the name of that metric into the AWS/Backup namespace of the Metrics section of the CloudWatch console.