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Difficulty: EasyCloudWatch Metrics and Alarms

A SysOps Administrator configures a CloudWatch alarm to monitor the CPUUtilization metric of an Amazon EC2 instance. The alarm is set to trigger if the CPU utilization exceeds 80%80\% for a period of 1 minute. However, the administrator notices that the alarm frequently enters the INSUFFICIENT_DATA state because the instance is using standard monitoring, which only sends metric data to CloudWatch every 5 minutes. Which of the following actions will resolve this issue by ensuring the instance reports CPU metrics every minute?

  1. Enable detailed monitoring for the EC2 instance.Answer
  2. B
    Configure the alarm with a period of 10 seconds to force CloudWatch to collect the metric more frequently.
  3. C
    Create an Amazon EventBridge rule that triggers an AWS Systems Manager Automation document to poll the CPU metric every minute.
  4. D
    Reduce the Auto Scaling group cooldown period to 60 seconds to force the instance to update its metrics more frequently.

Answer

Enable detailed monitoring for the EC2 instance.
Enabling detailed monitoring for the EC2 instance changes the metric reporting frequency from the default 5-minute interval to a 1-minute interval. This allows the CloudWatch alarm with a 1-minute period to receive data points consistently and function as designed.

Step-by-Step Solution

1
Identify the cause of the INSUFFICIENT_DATA state.
The EC2 instance is configured with standard monitoring, which sends metrics to CloudWatch at 5-minute intervals, causing a mismatch with the 1-minute alarm evaluation period.
CloudWatch alarms require at least one data point within the evaluation period to assess the metric state; otherwise, they default to INSUFFICIENT_DATA.
2
Select the mechanism to increase EC2 metric resolution.
Detailed monitoring must be enabled on the EC2 instance to send metrics at 1-minute intervals.
Detailed monitoring is the native AWS feature designed to increase the frequency of EC2 metrics from 5 minutes to 1 minute.

Key Concept

CloudWatch Standard vs. Detailed Monitoring for EC2
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Topics

CloudWatch Metrics and Alarms

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