New Amazon CloudWatch metrics to monitor EC2 instances exceeding I/O performance

Today, Amazon announced two new Amazon CloudWatch metrics that provide insight into when your application exceeds the I/O performance limits for your EC2 instance with attached EBS volumes. These two metrics, Instance EBS IOPS Exceeded Check and Instance EBS Throughput Exceeded Check, monitor if the driven IOPS or throughput is exceeding the maximum EBS IOPS or throughput that your instance can support.

With these two new metrics at the instance level, you can quickly identify and respond to application performance issues stemming from exceeding the EBS-Optimized limits of your instance. These metrics will return a value of 0 (performance not exceeded) or a 1 (performance exceeded) when your workload is exceeding the EBS-Optimized IOPS or throughput limit of the EC2 instance. With Amazon CloudWatch, you can use these new metrics to create customized dashboards and set alarms that notify you or automatically perform actions based on these metrics, such as moving to a larger instance size or a different instance type that supports higher EBS-Optimized limits.

The Instance EBS IOPS Exceeded Check and Instance EBS Throughput Exceeded Check metrics are available by default at a 1-minute frequency at no additional charges, for all Nitro-based Amazon EC2 instances with EBS volumes attached. You can access these metrics via the EC2 console, CLI, or CloudWatch API in all Commercial AWS Regions, including the AWS GovCloud (US) Regions and China Regions. To learn more about these CloudWatch metrics, please visit the EC2 CloudWatch Metrics documentation.