Cloudwatch Dashboard

Amazon CloudWatch dashboards are customizable home pages in the CloudWatch console that you can use to monitor your resources in a single view, even those resources that are spread across different Regions. You can use CloudWatch dashboards to create customized views of the metrics and alarms for your AWS resources.

  1. We will setup a single pain of glass dashboard that teams can use to monitor the operational aspects of the workload.

    • In your AWS Console, navigate back to CloudWatch
    • Click on the Dashboards feature, then click the orange button Create dashboard
    • Give your dashboard a name such as “Operations-Dashboard”, click Create dashboard
    • On the Add widget screen select Text
    • The next screen will give some examples of how Markdown can be incorporated into a Text widget to make a more dynamic Dashboard. For our simple example, paste the below text into the Markdown field:
    # Operational Dashboard for Lab
    
[Click Here](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technical_documentation) to access the technical documentation
     
**This week's on-call schedule**

Day | Team
----|----- 
Monday| Red Team
Tuesday| Blue Team
Wednesday| Green Team
Thursday| Yellow Team
Friday| Pink Team
    
**Command to start node app**  
``` systemctl start sampleapp  ```
    • On the bottom right corner of the widget, look for a control that will allow you to resize the widget. Use this to size the widget to your liking.

  2. Add Alarms Widget: Now we will add a widget showing the status of the relevant alarms

    • From the same screen, click Add Widget
    • Choose the type of Alarm status
    • Select the CloudWatch alarms you created in the previous labs
    • Enter Alarm Status in the title field. Click Add to dashboard
    • Move and resize the widget to your liking

  3. Add Metrics Widgets: We will add 2 sets of metrics, showing a numberical representation of CPU Utilization and a graphical representation of Network throughput.

    • From the same screen, click Add Widget
    • Choose the type of Number
    • Pick the namespace of EC2
    • Select Per-Instance Metrics
    • Search for CPUUtilization
    • Find the 2 instances with the name Lab App host and click the box next to each one. Click Create widget
    • Move and resize the widget to your liking
    • Now we will add a Network Monitor, click Add Widget
    • Choose the type of Line, and the source of Metrics on the following screen
    • Pick the namespace of EC2
    • Select Per-Instance Metrics
    • Find and select the NetworkIn and NetworkOut metrics for your Lab App host instances
    • You should have a total of 4 metrics selected. Once they are all selected, click the button to Create Widget
    • Move and resize the widget to your liking

  4. Add Logs Table Widgets: Now we will add a Logs Table widget to include log data on our dashboard.

    • From the dashboard screen, click Add Widget
    • Choose the type of Logs table
    • In the Select log group(s) field, search for and select application.log
    • Enter the below query in the query field
    fields @timestamp, @message
| filter Severity like /ERROR/

    ``

    • Click the Run query button to validate the query works
    • Click the Create Widget button to add the logs data to the Dashboard
    • Move and resize the widget to your liking
    • Click the Save dashboard button to save your changes

See below for an example of a completed dashboard: Dashboard