Create new AWS alert on startup for monitoring memory - best way

Question

Afternoon all, I found a few old threads (9 years old) saying to use an SNS topic, etc. but my goal is simple.  I have an autoscaling group, and when a new machine starts, I have cloudwatch graphs adding those nicely, but also want to have a cloudwatch alert created to monitor the mem_used_percent and if its > 80% alert (maybe reboot or just send to an SNS topic).

So as I said, the old ways are quite deep for something I think should be easier now.  These machines as I said are all in an auto scale group, so I could make a new template and just add something to that image on boot, or is there a newer way to get this easier?

Thanks all

Didier_Durand · Accepted Answer

Hi,

The solution to your problem is to use EventBridge auto-scaling events: https://docs.aws.amazon.com/autoscaling/ec2/userguide/automating-ec2-auto-scaling-with-eventbridge.html

In particular, have a look at https://docs.aws.amazon.com/autoscaling/ec2/userguide/ec2-auto-scaling-event-reference.html

These events from EventBridge will trigger a Lambda (and then may a StepFunction) in which you can do all you need and already know how to do (*"I know how to setup the alert options, reboot, run a lambda function, ")*

Best,

Didier

Steve_M · Answer

Collect the memory usage metrics using CloudWatch Agent https://docs.aws.amazon.com/AmazonCloudWatch/latest/monitoring/Install-CloudWatch-Agent.html

And then have a look at using Systems Manager for automating the actions when this breaches the threshold https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/mt/automating-amazon-cloudwatch-alarms-with-aws-systems-manager/

Create new AWS alert on startup for monitoring memory - best way

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