Amazon EC2 Auto Scaling Monitoring

Amazon EC2 Auto Scaling - Overview

Amazon EC2 Auto Scaling is a fully managed service that automatically adjusts the number of Amazon EC2 instances in your application to maintain performance and availability. By defining scaling policies, minimum and maximum capacity limits, and health check configurations, EC2 Auto Scaling ensures your application always has the right number of instances to handle demand - scaling out during peak loads and scaling in when traffic decreases to optimize costs.

Monitoring Amazon EC2 Auto Scaling is critical to ensuring your application scales reliably and efficiently. Applications Manager's Amazon EC2 Auto Scaling monitoring tool provides real-time visibility into group capacity, instance lifecycle states, warm pool utilization, and EC2-level performance metrics such as CPU utilization, network throughput, and disk activity. With proactive alerts, historical trend analysis, and detailed activity history tracking, you can detect scaling bottlenecks, diagnose configuration issues, and ensure your Auto Scaling groups are operating within desired capacity bounds.

Creating a new Amazon EC2 Auto Scaling monitor

To learn how to create a new Amazon EC2 Auto Scaling monitor, refer here.

Monitored Parameters

Go to the Monitors Category View by clicking the Monitors tab. Click on the EC2 Auto Scaling instance available under Amazon in the Cloud Apps section. Displayed below is the Amazon EC2 Auto Scaling bulk configuration view, distributed into three tabs:

Availability tab gives the availability history for the past 24 hours or 30 days.
Performance tab gives the health status and events for the past 24 hours or 30 days.
List view tab enables you to perform bulk admin configurations.

By clicking a monitor from the list, you'll be taken to the Amazon EC2 Auto Scaling dashboard, which includes the following tabs:

Performance Overview

Parameter	Description
Total Instances (Group + Warm Pool)	The average combined total capacity of the Auto Scaling group and warm pool at the time of polling.
Total Instances	The average number of instances in the Auto Scaling group at the time of polling.
Total Warm Pool Instances	The average number of capacity units in the warm pool at the time of polling.
Total Capacity Units	The average number of capacity units in the Auto Scaling group at the time of polling.
GROUP OVERVIEW
Desired Instances	The desired capacity of instances configured in the Auto Scaling group.
Minimum Group Size	The minimum size of instances configured in the Auto Scaling group.
Maximum Group Size	The maximum size of instances configured in the Auto Scaling group.
WARM POOL CAPACITY OVERVIEW
Desired Warm Pool Instances	The average desired capacity of the warm pool at the time of polling.
Warm Pool Minimum Size	The minimum size of the warm pool at the time of polling.
Desired Instances (Group + Warm Pool)	The average combined desired capacity of the Auto Scaling group and warm pool at the time of polling.
Total Instances (Group + Warm Pool)	The average combined total capacity of the Auto Scaling group and warm pool at the time of polling.
INSTANCES
Running Instances	The average number of instances that are running as part of the Auto Scaling group at the time of polling.
Pending Instances	The average number of instances that are pending at the time of polling.
Standby Instances	The average number of instances that are in a Standby state at the time of polling.
Terminating Instances	The average number of instances that are in the process of terminating at the time of polling.
Total Instances	The average number of instances in the Auto Scaling group at the time of polling.
CAPACITY UNITS
Running Capacity Units	The average number of capacity units that are running as part of the Auto Scaling group at the time of polling.
Pending Capacity Units	The average number of capacity units that are pending at the time of polling.
Standby Capacity Units	The average number of capacity units that are in a Standby state at the time of polling.
Terminating Capacity Units	The average number of capacity units that are in the process of terminating at the time of polling.
Total Capacity Units	The average number of capacity units in the Auto Scaling group at the time of polling.
WARM POOL LIFECYCLE
Warmed Warm Pool Instances	The average number of instances that are warmed and ready in the warm pool at the time of polling.
Pending Warm Pool Instances	The average number of pending warm pool instances at the time of polling.
Terminating Warm Pool Instances	The average number of instances that are terminating in the warm pool at the time of polling.
Total Warm Pool Instances	The average number of capacity units in the warm pool at the time of polling.
WARM POOL INSTANCES
Instance ID	The unique identifier of the EC2 instance in the warm pool.
Instance Type	The instance type of the warm pool.
Availability Zone	The Availability Zone of the warm pool instance.
Launch Template	The launch template associated with the warm pool instance.
Lifecycle State	The current lifecycle state of the warm pool instance.
Health Status	The health status of the warm pool instance.

EC2 Instance Overview

Note: The EC2 Instance Overview tab is disabled from data collection by default as per the Optimize Data Collection feature. To enable data collection, navigate to Settings → Performance Polling, select the Optimize Data Collection tab, choose Amazon EC2 Auto Scaling as the monitor type and EC2 Instance Overview as the component, then set the preferred time interval.

Parameter	Description
STATUS CHECKS
Overall Status Check	The combined status check failures across all instances in the Auto Scaling group at the time of polling.
Instance Status Check	The combined instance status check failures across all instances in the Auto Scaling group at the time of polling.
System Status Check	The combined system status check failures across all instances in the Auto Scaling group at the time of polling.
CPU UTILIZATION
CPU Utilization	The average CPU utilization across all EC2 instances in the Auto Scaling group at the time of polling (in %).
INCOMING TRAFFIC
Incoming Traffic	The rate of incoming network data per minute across all instances in the Auto Scaling group between the poll interval (in MB/min).
OUTGOING TRAFFIC
Outgoing Traffic	The rate of outgoing network data per minute across all instances in the Auto Scaling group between the poll interval (in MB/min).
INCOMING PACKETS
Incoming Packets	The rate of incoming network packets per minute across all instances in the Auto Scaling group between the poll interval (in packets/min).
OUTGOING PACKETS
Outgoing Packets	The rate of outgoing network packets per minute across all instances in the Auto Scaling group between the poll interval (in packets/min).
DISK READ OPERATIONS
Disk Read Operations	The rate of completed disk read operations per minute across all instances in the Auto Scaling group between the poll interval (in operations/min).
DISK WRITE OPERATIONS
Disk Write Operations	The rate of completed disk write operations per minute across all instances in the Auto Scaling group between the poll interval (in operations/min).
DISK READ DATA
Disk Read Data	The rate of data read from disk per minute across all instances in the Auto Scaling group between the poll interval (in MB/min).
DISK WRITE DATA
Disk Write Data	The rate of data written to disk per minute across all instances in the Auto Scaling group between the poll interval (in MB/min).
INSTANCE DETAILS
Instance ID	The unique identifier of the EC2 instance.
Availability Zone	The Availability Zone in which the instance is running.
Launch Configuration	The name of the launch configuration used to launch this instance.
Launch Template	The name of the launch template.
Launch Template Version	The version of the launch template.
Lifecycle State	The current lifecycle state of the instance within the Auto Scaling group.
Health Status	The health status of the instance. Possible values: Healthy or Unhealthy

Automatic Scaling

Parameter	Description
SCALING POLICIES
Policy Name	The name of the scaling policy.
Policy Type	The type of scaling policy.
Metric Type	The metric type used by the scaling policy.
Target Value	The target value for the metric used by the scaling policy.
Mode	The predictive scaling policy mode.
Warmup	The warm-up period before a newly launched instance contributes to metrics (in seconds).
Scheduling Buffer	The scheduling buffer time for predictive scaling (in seconds).
Max Capacity Buffer	The buffer percentage above forecast capacity for predictive scaling.
Max Capacity Behavior	The behavior when forecast capacity approaches maximum capacity.
Scale-In	Indicates whether the target tracking scaling policy is allowed to scale in and remove instances from the Auto Scaling group.
Policy Status	Indicates whether the scaling policy is currently enabled or disabled.
SCHEDULED ACTIONS
Action Name	The name of the scheduled scaling action.
Start Time	The timestamp of when the scheduled action is set to begin.
End Time	The timestamp of when the scheduled action is set to expire.
Recurrence	The recurring schedule expression.
Minimum Group Size	The minimum group size set by this scheduled action.
Maximum Group Size	The maximum group size set by this scheduled action.
Desired Capacity	The desired capacity set by this scheduled action.

Activity

Parameter	Description
ACTIVITY NOTIFICATIONS
Notification Type	The type of Auto Scaling event that triggers the notification.
Topic Name(s)	The name of the SNS topic for the notification.
ACTIVITY HISTORY
Activity ID	The unique ID of the scaling activity.
Start Time	The timestamp of when the scaling activity started.
End Time	The timestamp of when the scaling activity ended.
Activity Run Time(s)	The total run time of the scaling activity (in seconds).
Status	The current status of the scaling activity.
Status Message	The status message provides details on the current status of the scaling activity.
Description	A description of the scaling activity.
Cause	The reason that triggered the scaling activity.

Configuration

Parameter	Description
CONFIGURATION
Created Date	The timestamp when the Auto Scaling group was created.
Launch Configuration	The name of the associated launch configuration.
Launch Template	The name of the associated launch template.
Launch Template Version	The version of the associated launch template.
Health Check Type	The type of health check used to determine the health status of instances in the Auto Scaling group. Possible values: EC2 or ELB
Health Check Grace Period	The amount of time that Auto Scaling waits before checking the health status of a newly launched instance (in seconds).
Default Cooldown	The default cooldown period (in seconds) for the Auto Scaling group (in seconds).
Scale-In Protection	Indicates whether newly launched instances in the Auto Scaling group are protected from a scale-in event.
VPC Zone Identifier	The subnet IDs for the instances in the Auto Scaling group.
Service-Linked Role ARN	The name of the service-linked role that the Auto Scaling group uses.
LIFECYCLE HOOKS
Hook Name	The name of the lifecycle hook.
Lifecycle Transition	The lifecycle transition to which the hook is attached. Possible values: autoscaling: EC2_INSTANCE_LAUNCHING or autoscaling: EC2_INSTANCE_TERMINATING
Default Result	The default action when the heartbeat timeout expires. Possible values: CONTINUE or ABANDON
Heartbeat Timeout	The maximum time that can elapse before the lifecycle hook times out (in seconds).
Notification Target	The name of the notification target for the lifecycle hook.
Role Name	The name of the IAM role that allows the Auto Scaling group to publish to the notification target.

Amazon EC2 Auto Scaling Monitoring

Amazon EC2 Auto Scaling - Overview

Creating a new Amazon EC2 Auto Scaling monitor

Monitored Parameters

Performance Overview

EC2 Instance Overview

Automatic Scaling

Activity

Configuration

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