All the EC2 instance types have to come up with various combinations like CPU, Storage, Memory and other networking capacities. It also gives flexibility in selecting the right mix of resources for respective applications.
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General Purpose |
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| Type |
t2 (tiny or turbo) |
m5 (medium) |
| Description |
High frequency Intel Xeon processors CPU Burstable Performance Lowest-cost general purpose instance type Optimized for changing workloads |
High frequency Intel Xeon processors Balanced Optimized for consistent workloads |
| Compute Optimized |
|
| Type |
c5 (compute) |
| Description |
High ratio of compute to memory Optimized for compute-intensive workloads Deliver cost-effective high performance at a low price per compute ratio |
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Memory Optimized | |
| Type |
r4 (RAM) |
x1e (xtreme) |
| Description |
High Frequency Intel Xeon processor Optimized for memory-intensive applications Support for Enhanced Networking |
High Frequency Intel Xeon processor Optimized for high-performance databases, memory-intensive databases, and other memory-intensive applications |
| Accelerated Computing |
|
| Type |
p3 (pictures) |
| Description |
High frequency Intel Xeon and GPU Optimized for functions, graphics processing, and other GPU uses Supports NVLink for peer-to-peer GPU communication |
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Storage Optimized | ||
| Types |
h1 (HDD) |
i3 (IOPS) |
d2 (dense) |
| Description |
HDD storage High disk throughput High frequency Intel Xeon processors v4 Enhanced Networking up to 25Gbps |
SSD storage High Random I/O performance and High Sequential Read throughput High frequency Intel Xeon processors v4 Enhanced Networking up to 25Gbps |
HDD storage Highest disk throughput High frequency Intel Xeon processors v3 |
By default, some metrics are unavailable through CloudWatch so we need to enable them.
For Ubuntu EC2, execute the following lines:
More information about the installation on Amazon Linux and Red Hat Enterprise Linux here.
Then download, install and configure the monitoring scripts:
Inside the package, we’ll be interested in mon-put-instance-data.pl script. It will collect memory, swap and disk space utilization data on the current system and then send it to CloudWatch. We’ll principally use MemoryUtilization and DiskSpaceUtilization.
Let’s set up a cronjob sending our metrics periodically. Add the following line in your crontab –e
Then access your metrics in CloudWatch with the prefix System/Linux.
EC2 instances allow users to increase or decrease resource capacity on demand. It can also be integrated into AWS components and features such as Auto Scaling Group which automatically increase and decrease your EC2 instances number inside your ASG (Auto Scaling Group). It can also be grouped inside clusters and managed by either ECS (Amazon EC2 Container Service) or Kubernetes (EKS).
EC2 key metrics are generally into three types :
Let’s dig into it...
For your EC2 instance :
| Name |
Description |
Unit |
CloudWatch Metric Access |
| CPUUtilization |
Percentage of allocated EC2 compute units that are currently in use on the instance |
Percent |
AWS/EC2 |
For your EC2 burstable performance instances :
| Name |
Description |
Units |
CloudWatch Metric Access |
| CPUCreditUsage ( T2 Instances) |
Number of CPU credits spent by the instance for CPU utilization |
Credits (vCPU-minutes) |
AWS/EC2 |
| CPUCreditBalance ( T2 Instances) |
Number of earned CPU credits that an instance has accrued since it was launched or started |
Credits (vCPU-minutes) |
AWS/EC2 |
| CPUSurplusCreditBalance (T2 Unlimited only) |
Number of surplus credits that have been spent |
Credits (vCPU-minutes) |
AWS/EC2 |
| CPUSurplusCreditsCharged (T2 Unlimited only) |
Number of spent surplus credits that are not paid down by earned CPU credits. |
Credits (vCPU-minutes) |
AWS/EC2 |
| Name |
Description |
Units |
CloudWatch Namespace |
| NetworkIn |
Number of bytes received on all network interfaces by the instance |
Bytes |
AWS/EC2 |
| NetworkOut |
Number of bytes sent out on all network interfaces by the instance. |
Bytes |
AWS/EC2 |
| NetworkPacketsIn |
Number of packets received on all network interfaces by the instance. |
Count |
AWS/EC2 |
| NetworkPacketsOut |
Number of packets sent out on all network interfaces by the instance. |
Count |
AWS/EC2 |
| Name |
Description |
Units |
CloudWatch Namespace |
| DiskReadOps/DiskWriteOps |
Completed read/write operations from all instance store volumes available to the instance in a specified period of time |
Count |
AWS/EC2 |
| DiskReadBytes/DiskWriteBytes |
Bytes read from/written to all instance store volumes available to the instance |
Bytes |
AWS/EC2 |
You also can go deeper by checking what is the best CloudWatch metrics to watch for your EBS, the Amazon Elastic Block Store alongside your EC2.
Now that you understand better EC2 types, and which metrics are important to monitor, you may check what is best for your workflow.