Monitoring memory usage in AWS CloudWatch for Windows instance

Question

asked Jul 17, 2019 in AWS by yuvraj (19.1k points)

By default, memory usage isn’t monitored by CloudWatch.

This is what I did:

1. I created a user named custom-metrics-user. Then I stored the access and secret key.

2. I created and attached an Inline Policy to the user. it looks like this:

{
  "Version": "2012-10-17",
  "Statement": [
    {
      "Effect": "Allow",
      "Action": ["cloudwatch:PutMetricData", "cloudwatch:GetMetricStatistics", "cloudwatch:ListMetrics", "ec2:DescribeTags"],
      "Resource": "*"
    }
  ]
}

3. I launched a Windows Instance [2012 R2 Base AMI]. After accessing the instance through RDP, I found that the AWS.EC2.Windows.CloudWatch.json file is already present.

4. I changed that .json file accordingly. After changing it, it looks like this:

{
    "EngineConfiguration": {
        "PollInterval": "00:00:15",
        "Components": [
            {
                "Id": "ApplicationEventLog",
                "FullName": "AWS.EC2.Windows.CloudWatch.EventLog.EventLogInputComponent,AWS.EC2.Windows.CloudWatch",
                "Parameters": {
                    "LogName": "Application",
                    "Levels": "1"
                }
            },
            {
                "Id": "SystemEventLog",
                "FullName": "AWS.EC2.Windows.CloudWatch.EventLog.EventLogInputComponent,AWS.EC2.Windows.CloudWatch",
                "Parameters": {
                    "LogName": "System",
                    "Levels": "7"
                }
            },
            {
                "Id": "SecurityEventLog",
                "FullName": "AWS.EC2.Windows.CloudWatch.EventLog.EventLogInputComponent,AWS.EC2.Windows.CloudWatch",
                "Parameters": {
                "LogName": "Security",
                "Levels": "7"
                }
            },
            {
                "Id": "ETW",
                "FullName": "AWS.EC2.Windows.CloudWatch.EventLog.EventLogInputComponent,AWS.EC2.Windows.CloudWatch",
                "Parameters": {
                    "LogName": "Microsoft-Windows-WinINet/Analytic",
                    "Levels": "7"
                }
            },
            {
                "Id": "IISLog",
                "FullName": "AWS.EC2.Windows.CloudWatch.IisLog.IisLogInputComponent,AWS.EC2.Windows.CloudWatch",
                "Parameters": {
                    "LogDirectoryPath": "C:\\inetpub\\logs\\LogFiles\\W3SVC1"
                }
            },
            {
                "Id": "CustomLogs",
                "FullName": "AWS.EC2.Windows.CloudWatch.CustomLog.CustomLogInputComponent,AWS.EC2.Windows.CloudWatch",
                "Parameters": {
                    "LogDirectoryPath": "C:\\CustomLogs\\",
                    "TimestampFormat": "MM/dd/yyyy HH:mm:ss",
                    "Encoding": "UTF-8",
                    "Filter": "",
                    "CultureName": "en-US",
                    "TimeZoneKind": "Local"
                }
            },
            {
                "Id": "PerformanceCounter",
                "FullName": "AWS.EC2.Windows.CloudWatch.PerformanceCounterComponent.PerformanceCounterInputComponent,AWS.EC2.Windows.CloudWatch",
                "Parameters": {
                    "CategoryName": "Memory",
                    "CounterName": "Available MBytes",
                    "InstanceName": "",
                    "MetricName": "Memory",
                    "Unit": "Megabytes",
                    "DimensionName": "InstanceId",
                    "DimensionValue": "{instance_id}"
                }
            },
            {
                "Id": "CloudWatchLogs",
                "FullName": "AWS.EC2.Windows.CloudWatch.CloudWatchLogsOutput,AWS.EC2.Windows.CloudWatch",
                "Parameters": {
                    "AccessKey": "",
                    "SecretKey": "",
                    "Region": "us-east-1",
                    "LogGroup": "Default-Log-Group",
                    "LogStream": "{instance_id}"
                }
            },
            {
                "Id": "CloudWatch",
                "FullName": "AWS.EC2.Windows.CloudWatch.CloudWatch.CloudWatchOutputComponent,AWS.EC2.Windows.CloudWatch",
                "Parameters":
                {
                    "AccessKey": "AKIAIK2U6EU675354BQ",
                    "SecretKey": "nPyk9ntdwW0y5oaw8353fsdfTi0e5/imx5Q09vz",
                    "Region": "us-east-1",
                    "NameSpace": "System/Windows"
                }
            }
        ],
        "Flows": {
            "Flows":
            [
                "PerformanceCounter,CloudWatch"
            ]
        }
    }
}

5. I enabled CloudWatch Logs integration under EC2ConfigSettings.

6. I restarted the EC2Config Service.

I got no errors but the Memory metric isn't being shown in the Cloud Watch console. The blog says to wait for 10-15 minutes for the metric to appear, but it has already been an hour since I have done it. What’s going wrong?

1 Answer

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kodee · Answer 1 · 2019-07-17T07:53:40+0000

First, add this IAM role:

{
    "Version": "2012-10-17",
    "Statement": [
        {
            "Sid": "AllowAccessToSSM",
            "Effect": "Allow",
            "Action": [
                "cloudwatch:PutMetricData",
                "logs:CreateLogGroup",
                "logs:CreateLogStream",
                "logs:DescribeLogGroups",
                "logs:DescribeLogStreams",
                "logs:PutLogEvents"
            ],
            "Resource": [
                "*"
            ]
        }
    ]
}

Modify the EC2Config file:

Check this following path: C:\Program Files\Amazon\Ec2ConfigService\Settings.AWS.EC2.Windows.CloudWatch.json

Add this to the JSON file:

...
{
    "Id": "PerformanceCounter",
    "FullName": "AWS.EC2.Windows.CloudWatch.PerformanceCounterComponent.PerformanceCounterInputComponent,AWS.EC2.Windows.CloudWatch",
    "Parameters": {
        "CategoryName": "Memory",
        "CounterName": "Available MBytes",
        "InstanceName": "",
        "MetricName": "Memory",
        "Unit": "Megabytes",
        "DimensionName": "InstanceId",
        "DimensionValue": "{instance_id}"
    }
}
...
{
    "Id": "CloudWatch",
    "FullName": "AWS.EC2.Windows.CloudWatch.CloudWatch.CloudWatchOutputComponent,AWS.EC2.Windows.CloudWatch",
    "Parameters":
    {
        "AccessKey": "",
        "SecretKey": "",
        "Region": "eu-west-1",
        "NameSpace": "PerformanceMonitor"
    }
}

Restart EC2Config and you will receive your CloudWatch metrics on the console in a few minutes.

Monitoring memory usage in AWS CloudWatch for Windows instance

1 Answer

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