Custom EC2 CloudWatch Metrics For Memory and Disk Utilization

Written by Nishant Parmar

Published09 August 2024

Tech

Set up custom CloudWatch metrics for your EC2 instances to monitor memory and disk utilization. Simplify your resource management with ease.

Table of contents

Custom EC2 CloudWatch Metrics for Memory and Disk Utilization

Memory (RAM) Usage.
Disk Usage.

What is a CloudWatch Agent?

Create Role for EC2 Instance

Go to IAM → Roles → Create Role → AWS Service → EC2 → Select `CloudWatchAgentServerPolicy` → Name: CloudWatchAgentRole → Create.

Configure CloudWatchAgent on EC2 instance

SSH to your EC2 instance and run the following script to install the cloudwatch agent. (Here I am using Ubuntu Server)

Wget

https://s3.amazonaws.com/amazoncloudwatch-agent/ubuntu/amd64/latest/amazon-cloudwatch-agent.deb

sudo dpkg -i -E ./amazon-cloudwatch-agent.deb

sudo apt-get update

Edit amazon-cloudwatch-agent.json file: sudo nano /opt/aws/amazon-cloudwatch-agent/etc/amazon-cloudwatch-agent.json
Copy the following script in .json file.

{
   "agent": {
   "metrics_collection_interval": 60,
   "run_as_user": "cwagent"
 },
 "metrics": {
   "append_dimensions": {
       "InstanceId": "${aws:InstanceId}"
   },
   "metrics_collected": {
     "disk": {
       "measurement": [
         "used_percent"
       ],
       "metrics_collection_interval": 60,
       "resources": [
         "/"
       ]
     },
     "mem": {
       "measurement": [
         "mem_used_percent"
       ],
       "metrics_collection_interval": 60
     }
   }