AWS CloudWatch Custom Metrics Cookbook

Install and configure AWS CloudWatch Monitoring Scripts. These are AWS provided Perl scripts for Linux that monitor memory metrics which are pushed to CloudWatch.

Platforms

• Amazon Linux
• Ubuntu

Attributes

See attributes/default.rb for the current default values as the listing below may not be current:

• node['cwmon']['user'] - The user to run the script. Defaults are set to ec2-user for Amazon Linux and ubuntu for Ubuntu instances.
• node['cwmon']['group'] - The user's group. Defaults to ec2-user for Amazon Linux and ubuntu for Ubuntu instances.
• node['cwmon']['base'] - The base directory which will own the installation and files. Defaults to /opt/aws/cloudwatch.
• node['cwmon']['version'] - The version of the scripts to install. Defaults to 1.2.1.
• node['cwmon']['interval'] - Frequency with which to run script via cron job. Defaults to 5 minutes.
• node['cwmon']['options'] - The list of options to pass to the script. Defaults to --mem-util. However, following options are available:
  • --mem-avail
  • --mem-used
  • --mem-used-incl-cache-buff
  • --mem-util
  • --swap-used
  • --swap-util

Usage

Put recipe[CloudWatch] in a run list, or include_recipe 'CloudWatch' to ensure that the CloudWatch monitoring script is installed and cron'ed on your systems.