What is @aws-cdk/aws-cloudwatch?
@aws-cdk/aws-cloudwatch is an AWS CDK library that allows you to define and manage Amazon CloudWatch resources using code. It provides a high-level, object-oriented abstraction to create and manage CloudWatch Alarms, Dashboards, Metrics, and more.
What are @aws-cdk/aws-cloudwatch's main functionalities?
Creating CloudWatch Alarms
This code sample demonstrates how to create a CloudWatch Alarm that monitors the CPU utilization of an EC2 instance. The alarm triggers if the CPU utilization exceeds 80% for three consecutive evaluation periods.
const cloudwatch = require('@aws-cdk/aws-cloudwatch');
const cdk = require('@aws-cdk/core');
const app = new cdk.App();
const stack = new cdk.Stack(app, 'MyStack');
const alarm = new cloudwatch.Alarm(stack, 'MyAlarm', {
metric: new cloudwatch.Metric({
namespace: 'AWS/EC2',
metricName: 'CPUUtilization',
dimensions: { InstanceId: 'i-1234567890abcdef0' },
}),
threshold: 80,
evaluationPeriods: 3,
comparisonOperator: cloudwatch.ComparisonOperator.GREATER_THAN_OR_EQUAL_TO_THRESHOLD,
});
app.synth();
Creating CloudWatch Dashboards
This code sample demonstrates how to create a CloudWatch Dashboard and add a graph widget to it. The graph widget displays the CPU utilization of an EC2 instance.
const cloudwatch = require('@aws-cdk/aws-cloudwatch');
const cdk = require('@aws-cdk/core');
const app = new cdk.App();
const stack = new cdk.Stack(app, 'MyStack');
const dashboard = new cloudwatch.Dashboard(stack, 'MyDashboard', {
dashboardName: 'MyDashboard',
});
dashboard.addWidgets(new cloudwatch.GraphWidget({
title: 'EC2 CPU Utilization',
left: [new cloudwatch.Metric({
namespace: 'AWS/EC2',
metricName: 'CPUUtilization',
dimensions: { InstanceId: 'i-1234567890abcdef0' },
})],
}));
app.synth();
Creating Custom Metrics
This code sample demonstrates how to create a custom CloudWatch metric and set up an alarm for it. The custom metric is defined with a specific namespace and dimensions.
const cloudwatch = require('@aws-cdk/aws-cloudwatch');
const cdk = require('@aws-cdk/core');
const app = new cdk.App();
const stack = new cdk.Stack(app, 'MyStack');
const customMetric = new cloudwatch.Metric({
namespace: 'MyNamespace',
metricName: 'MyCustomMetric',
dimensions: { MyDimension: 'MyValue' },
});
const alarm = new cloudwatch.Alarm(stack, 'MyCustomMetricAlarm', {
metric: customMetric,
threshold: 100,
evaluationPeriods: 1,
comparisonOperator: cloudwatch.ComparisonOperator.GREATER_THAN_THRESHOLD,
});
app.synth();
Other packages similar to @aws-cdk/aws-cloudwatch
aws-sdk
The aws-sdk package is the official AWS SDK for JavaScript. It provides low-level access to AWS services, including CloudWatch. While it offers more granular control, it lacks the high-level abstractions provided by @aws-cdk/aws-cloudwatch, making it more complex to use for defining and managing CloudWatch resources.
cloudwatch-metrics
The cloudwatch-metrics package is a lightweight library for publishing custom metrics to Amazon CloudWatch. It is simpler and more focused compared to @aws-cdk/aws-cloudwatch, but it does not provide the comprehensive resource management capabilities that the CDK library offers.
serverless-plugin-cloudwatch
The serverless-plugin-cloudwatch package is a Serverless Framework plugin that allows you to define CloudWatch Alarms and Dashboards in your serverless.yml configuration file. It is tailored for use with the Serverless Framework and offers a more integrated experience for serverless applications, but it is less flexible and powerful compared to the @aws-cdk/aws-cloudwatch library.
Metrics
Metric objects represent a metric that is emitted by AWS services or your own
application, such as CPUUsage
, FailureCount
or Bandwidth
.
Metric objects can be constructed directly or are exposed by resources as
attributes. Resources that expose metrics will have functions that look
like metricXxx()
which will return a Metric object, initialized with defaults
that make sense.
For example, lambda.Function
objects have the fn.metricErrors()
method, which
represents the amount of errors reported by that Lambda function:
const errors = fn.metricErrors();
Aggregation
To graph or alarm on metrics you must aggregate them first, using a function
like Average
or a percentile function like P99
. By default, most Metric objects
returned by CDK libraries will be configured as Average
over 300 seconds
(5 minutes).
The exception is if the metric represents a count of discrete events, such as
failures. In that case, the Metric object will be configured as Sum
over 300 seconds
, i.e. it represents the number of times that event occurred over the
time period.
If you want to change the default aggregation of the Metric object (for example,
the function or the period), you can do so by passing additional parameters
to the metric function call:
const minuteErrorRate = fn.metricErrors({
statistic: 'avg',
periodSec: 60,
label: 'Lambda failure rate'
});
This function also allows changing the metric label or color (which will be
useful when embedding them in graphs, see below).
Rates versus Sums
The reason for using Sum
to count discrete events is that some events are
emitted as either 0
or 1
(for example Errors
for a Lambda) and some are
only emitted as 1
(for example NumberOfMessagesPublished
for an SNS
topic).
In case 0
-metrics are emitted, it makes sense to take the Average
of this
metric: the result will be the fraction of errors over all executions.
If 0
-metrics are not emitted, the Average
will always be equal to 1
,
and not be very useful.
In order to simplify the mental model of Metric
objects, we default to
aggregating using Sum
, which will be the same for both metrics types. If you
happen to know the Metric you want to alarm on makes sense as a rate
(Average
) you can always choose to change the statistic.
Alarms
Alarms can be created on metrics in one of two ways. Either create an Alarm
object, passing the Metric
object to set the alarm on:
new Alarm(this, 'Alarm', {
metric: fn.metricErrors(),
threshold: 100,
evaluationPeriods: 2,
});
Alternatively, you can call metric.newAlarm()
:
fn.metricErrors().newAlarm(this, 'Alarm', {
threshold: 100,
evaluationPeriods: 2,
});
The most important properties to set while creating an Alarms are:
threshold
: the value to compare the metric against.comparisonOperator
: the comparison operation to use, defaults to metric >= threshold
.evaluationPeriods
: how many consecutive periods the metric has to be
breaching the the threshold for the alarm to trigger.
Dashboards
Dashboards are set of Widgets stored server-side which can be accessed quickly
from the AWS console. Available widgets are graphs of a metric over time, the
current value of a metric, or a static piece of Markdown which explains what the
graphs mean.
The following widgets are available:
GraphWidget
-- shows any number of metrics on both the left and right
vertical axes.AlarmWidget
-- shows the graph and alarm line for a single alarm.SingleValueWidget
-- shows the current value of a set of metrics.TextWidget
-- shows some static Markdown.
Warning! Due to a bug in CloudFormation, you cannot update a Dashboard after
initially creating it if you let its name automatically be generated. You
must set dashboardName
if you intend to update the dashboard after creation.
(This note will be removed once the bug is fixed).
Graph widget
A graph widget can display any number of metrics on either the left
or
right
vertical axis:
dashboard.add(new GraphWidget({
title: "Executions vs error rate",
left: [executionCountMetric],
right: [errorCountMetric.with({
statistic: "average",
label: "Error rate",
color: "00FF00"
})]
}));
Alarm widget
An alarm widget shows the graph and the alarm line of a single alarm:
dashboard.add(new AlarmWidget({
title: "Errors",
alarm: errorAlarm,
}));
Single value widget
A single-value widget shows the latest value of a set of metrics (as opposed
to a graph of the value over time):
dashboard.add(new SingleValueWidget({
metrics: [visitorCount, purchaseCount],
}));
Text widget
A text widget shows an arbitrary piece of MarkDown. Use this to add explanations
to your dashboard:
dashboard.add(new TextWidget({
markdown: '# Key Performance Indicators'
}));
Dashboard Layout
The widgets on a dashboard are visually laid out in a grid that is 24 columns
wide. Normally you specify X and Y coordinates for the widgets on a Dashboard,
but because this is inconvenient to do manually, the library contains a simple
layout system to help you lay out your dashboards the way you want them to.
Widgets have a width
and height
property, and they will be automatically
laid out either horizontally or vertically stacked to fill out the available
space.
Widgets are added to a Dashboard by calling add(widget1, widget2, ...)
.
Widgets given in the same call will be laid out horizontally. Widgets given
in different calls will be laid out vertically. To make more complex layouts,
you can use the following widgets to pack widgets together in different ways:
Column
: stack two or more widgets vertically.Row
: lay out two or more widgets horizontally.Spacer
: take up empty space