Launched in 2009, Amazon CloudWatch has proven an integral service for monitoring one’s use of AWS resources and applications. Its own custom metrics functionality lets you create your own business and application metrics, see them in graph format, and kick off actions using Amazon CloudWatch Alarms.
With the rise of high-demand applications such as streaming videos, running flash sales, and code deployments that require quick reporting as changes occur, a one-minute interval for reporting has too little. As such, AWS is introducing high-resolution metrics.
High-Resolution Reporting for Amazon CloudWatch
High-resolution metrics lets you publish Amazon CloudWatch metrics with a 1-second resolution. Similarly, CloudWatch alarms will check every 10 seconds for actions to take. This is a great feature for catching transient spikes that would have gone unnoticed, such as low memory. These hi-res metrics would enable you to act on these problems within a matter of seconds.
You have two ways for publishing high-resolution metrics: a) through the API, where you can set the PutMetricData function’s Storage Resolution parameter to 1, or; b) the CloudWatch collected plugin now supports the collection and publication of high-res metrics. Just set the enable_high_resolution_metrics parameter to do so.
As metrics age, their resolution starts to decrease. Here are their availability schedules:
- 1 second metrics—available for 3 hours
- 60 second metrics—available for 15 days
- 5 minute metrics—available for 63 days
- 1 hour metrics—available for 455 days.
This feature is available for free in all AWS Regions, with AWS Govcloud soon to follow. Pricing can be found in the CloudWatch page.
If you are considering leveraging the cloud for your enterprise, talk to a professional. Contact our AWS experts here at PolarSeven.
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