Monitor your Lightsail resource metrics - Amazon Lightsail
Monitoring your resources effectivelyMetric concepts and terminologyMetrics available in Lightsail

Monitor your Lightsail resource metrics

Monitor the performance of your instances, databases, distributions, load balancers, container services, and buckets in Amazon Lightsail by checking and collecting their metric data. Establish a baseline over time, so that you can configure alarms to more easily detect anomalies and issues with the performance of your resources.

Amazon Lightsail reports metric data for instances, databases, content delivery network (CDN) distributions, load balancers, container services, and buckets. You can view and monitor this data in the Lightsail console. Monitoring is an important part of maintaining the reliability, availability, and performance of your resources. Monitor and collect metric data from your resources regularly so that you can more readily debug a multi-point failure, if one occurs.

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Monitoring your resources effectively

You should establish a baseline for normal resource performance in your environment. Measure performance at various times, and under different load conditions. As you monitor your resources, you should write down and record a history of your resource's performance over time. Compare the current performance of your resources against the historical data that you collected. This helps you identify normal performance patterns and performance anomalies, and devise methods to address them.

For example, you can monitor CPU utilization, network utilization, and status checks for your instances. When performance falls outside your established baseline, you might need to reconfigure or optimize the instance to reduce CPU utilization, or reduce network traffic. If your instance continues to operate above your CPU utilization thresholds, you might want to switch to a larger plan for your instance (use the $7 USD/month plan instead of the $5 USD/month plan). You can switch to a larger plan by creating a new snapshot of your instance, and then creating a new instance from the snapshot using the larger plan.

After you’ve established a baseline, you can configure alarms in the Lightsail console to notify you when your resources cross the specified thresholds. For more information, see Notifications and Alarms.

Metric concepts and terminology

The following terminology and concepts help you better understand the use of metrics in Lightsail.

Metrics

A metric represents a time-ordered set of data points. Think of a metric as a variable that you monitor, and the data points as representing the values of that variable over time. Metrics are uniquely defined by a name. For example, some instance metrics provided by Lightsail include CPU utilization (CPUUtilization), incoming network traffic (NetworkIn), and outgoing network traffic (NetworkOut). For more information about all of the resource metrics available in Lightsail, see Metrics available in Lightsail.

Metrics retention

Data points with a period of 60 seconds (1 minute resolution) are available for 15 days. Data points with a period of 300 seconds (5 minute resolution) are available for 63 days. Data points with a period of 3600 seconds (1 hour resolution) are available for 455 days (15 months).

Data points that are initially available with a shorter period are aggregated together for long-term storage. For example, data points with a 1 minute granularity remain available for 15 days with 1 minute resolution. After 15 days this data is still available, but is aggregated and is retrievable only with a resolution of 5 minutes. After 63 days, the data is further aggregated and is available with a resolution of 1 hour. If you need availability of metrics longer than these periods, you can use the Lightsail API, AWS Command Line Interface (AWS CLI), and SDKs to retrieve the data points for offline or different storage.

For more information, see GetInstanceMetricData, GetBucketMetricData, GetLoadBalancerMetricData, GetDistributionMetricData, and GetRelationalDatabaseMetricData in the Lightsail API reference.

Statistics

Metric statistics are the means in which data is aggregated over a period of time. Example statistics include Average, Sum, and Maximum. For example, instance CPU utilization metric data can be averaged using the Average statistic, database connections can be added using the Sum statistic, the maximum load balancer response time can be retrieved using the Maximum statistic, and so on.

For a list of available metric statistics, see statistics for GetInstanceMetricData, statistics for GetBucketMetricData, statistics for GetLoadBalancerMetricData, statistics for GetDistributionMetricData, and statistics for GetRelationalDatabaseMetricData in the Lightsail API reference.

Units

Each statistic has a unit of measure. Example units include Bytes, Seconds, Count, and Percent. For the complete list of the units, see units for GetInstanceMetricData, units for GetLoadBalancerMetricData, units for GetDistributionMetricData, and units for GetRelationalDatabaseMetricData in the Lightsail API reference.

Periods

A period is the length of time associated with a specific data point—the granularity of the returned data points. Each data point represents an aggregation of the metric data collected for a specified period of time. Periods are defined in seconds, and the valid values for period are any multiple of 60 seconds (1-minute) and 300 seconds (5-minutes).

When you retrieve data points using the Lightsail API, you can specify a period, start time, and end time. These parameters determine the overall length of time associated with the data point. Lightsail reports metric data in either 1-minute or 5-minute increments; therefore, you must specify periods in multiples of 60 seconds and 300 seconds. The values that you specify for the start time and end time determine how many periods Lightsail returns. If you prefer statistics aggregated in ten-minute blocks, specify a period of 600. For statistics aggregated over the entire hour, specify a period of 3600, and so on.

Periods are also important for Lightsail alarms. Lightsail evaluates data points for alarms every 5 minutes, and each data point for alarms represents a 5-minute period of aggregated data. When you create an alarm to monitor a specific metric, you are asking Lightsail to compare that metric to the threshold value that you specify. You have extensive control over how Lightsail makes that comparison. You can specify the period over which the comparison is made, and also specify how many evaluation periods are used to reach a conclusion. For more information, see Alarms.

Alarms

An alarm watches a single metric over a specified period of time, and notifies you when the metric crosses a threshold that you specified. The notification can be a banner displayed in the Lightsail console, an email sent to an email address you specified, and a SMS text message sent to a mobile phone number you specified. For more information, see Alarms.

Metrics available in Lightsail

Instance metrics

The following instance metrics are available. For more information, see Viewing instance metrics in Amazon Lightsail.

  • CPU utilization (CPUUtilization) — The percentage of allocated compute units that are currently in use on the instance. This metric identifies the processing power to run the applications on the instance. Tools in your operating system can show a lower percentage than Lightsail when the instance is not allocated a full processor core.

    When viewing the CPU utilization metric graphs for your instances in the Lightsail console, you will see sustainable, and burstable zones. For more information about what these zones mean, see CPU utilization sustainable and burstable zones.

  • Burst capacity minutes (BurstCapacityTime) and percentage (BurstCapacityPercentage) — Burst capacity minutes represent the amount of time available for your instance to burst at 100% CPU utilization. Burst capacity percentage is the percentage of CPU performance available to your instance. Your instance continuously consumes and accrues burst capacity. Burst capacity minutes are consumed at the full rate only when your instance operates at 100% CPU utilization. For more information about instance burst capacity, see Viewing instance burst capacity in Amazon Lightsail.

  • Incoming network traffic (NetworkIn) — The number of bytes received on all network interfaces by the instance. This metric identifies the volume of incoming network traffic to the instance. The number reported is the number of bytes received during the period. Because this metric is reported in 5-minute intervals, divide the reported number by 300 to find Bytes/second.

  • Outgoing network traffic (NetworkOut) — The number of bytes sent out on all network interfaces by the instance. This metric identifies the volume of outgoing network traffic from the instance. The number reported is the number of bytes sent during the period. Because this metric is reported in 5-minute intervals, divide the reported number by 300 to find Bytes/second.

  • Status check failures (StatusCheckFailed) — Reports whether the instance passed or failed both the instance status check and the system status check. This metric can be either 0 (passed) or 1 (failed). This metric is available at a 1-minute frequency.

  • Instance status check failures (StatusCheckFailed_Instance) — Reports whether the instance passed or failed the instance status check. This metric can be either 0 (passed) or 1 (failed). This metric is available at a 1-minute frequency.

  • System status check failures (StatusCheckFailed_System) — Reports whether the instance passed or failed the system status check. This metric can be either 0 (passed) or 1 (failed). This metric is available at a 1-minute frequency.

  • No token metadata requests (MetadataNoToken) — The number of times that the instance metadata service was successfully accessed without a token. This metric determines if there are any processes accessing instance metadata by using Instance Metadata Service Version 1, which doesn't use a token. If all requests use token-backed sessions, such as Instance Metadata Service Version 2, then the value is 0. For more information, see Instance metadata and user data in Amazon Lightsail.

Database metrics

The following database metrics are available. For more information, see Viewing database metrics in Amazon Lightsail.

  • CPU utilization (CPUUtilization) — The percentage of CPU utilization currently in use on the database.

  • Database connections (DatabaseConnections) — The number of database connections in use.

  • Disk queue depth (DiskQueueDepth) — The number of outstanding IOs (read/write requests) that are waiting to access the disk.

  • Free storage space (FreeStorageSpace) — The amount of available storage space.

  • Network receive throughput (NetworkReceiveThroughput) — The incoming (Receive) network traffic on the database, including both customer database traffic and AWS traffic used for monitoring and replication.

  • Network transmit throughput (NetworkTransmitThroughput) — The outgoing (Transmit) network traffic on the database, including both customer database traffic and AWS traffic used for monitoring and replication.

Distribution metrics

The following distribution metrics are available. For more information, see Viewing distribution metrics in Amazon Lightsail.

  • Requests (Requests) — The total number of viewer requests received by your distribution, for all HTTP methods, and for both HTTP and HTTPS requests.

  • Bytes uploaded (BytesUploaded) — The number of bytes uploaded to your origin by your distribution, using POST and PUT requests.

  • Bytes downloaded (BytesDownloaded) — The number of bytes downloaded by viewers for GET, HEAD, and OPTIONS requests.

  • Total error rate (TotalErrorRate) — The percentage of all viewer requests for which the response’s HTTP status code was 4xx or 5xx.

  • HTTP 4xx error rate (4xxErrorRate) — The percentage of all viewer requests for which the response’s HTTP status code was 4xx. In these cases, the client or client viewer may have made an error. For example, a status code of 404 (Not Found) means that the client requested an object that could not be found.

  • HTTP 5xx error rate (5xxErrorRate) — The percentage of all viewer requests for which the response’s HTTP status code was 5xx. In these cases, the origin server did not satisfy the request. For example, a status code of 503 (Service Unavailable) means that the origin server is currently unavailable.

Load balancer metrics

The following load balancer metrics are available. For more information, see Viewing load balancer metrics in Amazon Lightsail.

  • Healthy host count (HealthyHostCount) — The number of target instances that are considered healthy.

  • Unhealthy host count (UnhealthyHostCount) — The number of target instances that are considered unhealthy.

  • Load balancer HTTP 4XX (HTTPCode_LB_4XX_Count) — The number of HTTP 4XX client error codes that originated from the load balancer. Client errors are generated when requests are malformed or incomplete. These requests were not received by the target instance. This count does not include response codes generated by the target instances.

  • Load balancer HTTP 5XX (HTTPCode_LB_5XX_Count) — The number of HTTP 5XX server error codes that originated from the load balancer. This does not include any response codes generated by the target instance. This metric is reported if there are no healthy instances attached to the load balancer, or if the request rate exceeds the capacity of the instances (spillover) or the load balancer.

  • Instance HTTP 2XX (HTTPCode_Instance_2XX_Count) — The number of HTTP 2XX response codes generated by the target instances. This does not include any response codes generated by the load balancer.

  • Instance HTTP 3XX (HTTPCode_Instance_3XX_Count) — The number of HTTP 3XX response codes generated by the target instances. This does not include any response codes generated by the load balancer.

  • Instance HTTP 4XX (HTTPCode_Instance_4XX_Count) — The number of HTTP 4XX response codes generated by the target instances. This does not include any response codes generated by the load balancer.

  • Instance HTTP 5XX (HTTPCode_Instance_5XX_Count) — The number of HTTP 5XX response codes generated by the target instances. This does not include any response codes generated by the load balancer.

  • Instance response time (InstanceResponseTime) — The time elapsed, in seconds, after the request leaves the load balancer until a response from the target instance is received.

  • Client TLS negotiation error count (ClientTLSNegotiationErrorCount) — The number of TLS connections initiated by the client that did not establish a session with the load balancer due to a TLS error generated by the load balancer. Possible causes include a mismatch of ciphers or protocols.

  • Request count (RequestCount) — The number of requests processed over IPv4. This count includes only the requests with a response generated by a target instance of the load balancer.

  • Rejected connection count (RejectedConnectionCount) — The number of connections that were rejected because the load balancer had reached its maximum number of connections.

Container service metrics

The following container service metrics are available. For more information, see View container service metrics.

  • CPU utilization (CPUUtilization) — The average percentage of compute units that are currently in use across all nodes of your container service. This metric identifies the processing power required to run containers on your container service.

  • Memory utilization (MemoryUtilization) — The average percentage of memory that is currently in use across all nodes of your container service. This metric identifies the memory required to run containers on your container service.

Bucket metrics

The following bucket metrics are available. For more information, see Viewing bucket metrics in Amazon Lightsail.

  • Bucket size (BucketSizeBytes) — The amount of data stored in a bucket. This value is calculated by summing the size of all objects in the bucket (both current and noncurrent objects), including the size of all parts for all incomplete multipart uploads to the bucket.

  • Number of objects (NumberOfObjects) — The total number of objects stored in a bucket. This value is calculated by counting all objects in the bucket (both current and noncurrent objects) and the total number of parts for all incomplete multipart uploads to the bucket.

Note

Bucket metric data is not reported when your bucket is empty.