Setting up Amazon Cloudwatch to get an alert when you server is down

Posted by Saif Bechan on Server Fault See other posts from Server Fault or by Saif Bechan
Published on 2011-12-16T01:50:17Z Indexed on 2012/10/11 9:40 UTC
Read the original article Hit count: 191

Filed under:

amazon-ec2

|

amazon-cloudwatch

I have an instance running on Amazon EC2 that I turned into a webserver.

Now I have been looking at cloudwatch, but I do not know if it is the correct tool for the job. Basically I want to get informed when the server is down, for whatever reason.

Maybe the server got hacked, or the server shut down for whatever reason, I want to get a notification on that.

I have enabled clouwatch, and tried to set up a alert, but I only see things like network in-out or cpu usage, an d metrix. Now I do not know if these will do the trick.

© Server Fault or respective owner

Related posts about amazon-ec2

Amazon EC2 spot instances - is there a catch ?

as seen on Server Fault - Search for 'Server Fault'
I needed to start a new EC2 instance today and decided to try out the new spot instances, where you can reduce your instance cost by bidding on the maximum per-hour price you're prepared to pay. Since today's spot price was only 35c / hour, compared with 85c / hour for an on-demand instance, I was… >>> More
Amazon EC2 spot instances - is there a catch ?

as seen on Server Fault - Search for 'Server Fault'
I needed to start a new EC2 instance today and decided to try out the new spot instances, where you can reduce your instance cost by bidding on the maximum per-hour price you're prepared to pay. Since today's spot price was only 3.5c / hour, compared with 8.5c / hour for an on-demand instance, I… >>> More
Amazon EC2 master node hanging

as seen on Server Fault - Search for 'Server Fault'
Hi, I am using cloudera setup to launch a cluster with hadoop on Amazon. Sometimes, the master hadoop node hangs and we have to restart the job from the job. Did anyone face similar problem and resolve the issue. Thank you. >>> More
Can't Connect to IIS Ftp Site under Amazon EC2

as seen on Server Fault - Search for 'Server Fault'
IIS 7.5: Ftp Firewall Suport: Data Ranges 49152-65535 using external Ip of Amazon EC2 static IP Ftp IPv4 Restriction: allow: Amazon EC2 static IP Ftp Authentication: Anonymous: Enabled, Basic: Disabled, IISMgr: Enabled Ftp Authorization: Allow All Users: Read/Write Windows Firewall (Inbound): Open… >>> More
Amazon EC2 EBS volume scheduled backup/snapshots using puppet

as seen on Server Fault - Search for 'Server Fault'
I am not a Linux admin, although I wish I was, and I have seen these questions Amazon EC2 Backup Strategy Amazon EC2 + EBS:: Regular backup plan? Simple Backup Strategy for Amazon EC2 instances / volumes? And this suggestion http://alestic.com/2009/09/ec2-consistent-snapshot I tried using… >>> More

Related posts about amazon-cloudwatch

Setting up Amazon Cloudwatch to get an alert when you server is down

as seen on Server Fault - Search for 'Server Fault'
I have an instance running on Amazon EC2 that I turned into a webserver. Now I have been looking at cloudwatch, but I do not know if it is the correct tool for the job. Basically I want to get informed when the server is down, for whatever reason. Maybe the server got hacked, or the server shut… >>> More
Time between AWS Notifying of Scale Down and Terminating instance

as seen on Server Fault - Search for 'Server Fault'
Here is the scenario, there are multiple EC2 instances behind a load balancer. When traffic dies down, the SCALE_DOWN policy is triggered from a CloudWatch alarm. What I would like, is for the instance that is going to be terminated, or a separate server altogether, to be able to run a quick script… >>> More
Picking only the value field out of Cloudwatch Dimensions, Java

as seen on Server Fault - Search for 'Server Fault'
I have some data that are retried from the cloudwatch api's. Specifically I have used listMetrics. The data that I got from this call is : {Metrics: [{Namespace: Metric from grails, MetricName: hello123, Dimensions: [{Name: name, Value: 1425, }], }, {Namespace: Metric from grails, MetricName: hello123… >>> More
Is it possible to get a list of running processes with a Cloudwatch Alarm?

as seen on Server Fault - Search for 'Server Fault'
We have an EC2 instance (Ubuntu) that has a few java-based applications and lately we're getting hit with high CPU utilization spikes that trigger one of our Cloudwatch alarms. By the time we get into the server to look at the cpu utilization, things have calmed down. What we'd love to see in… >>> More
Cloudwatch alarms from Amazon AWS EC2 instance are always in UT, how can I change the alarm time zone to Eastern?

as seen on Server Fault - Search for 'Server Fault'
I am running an Amazon linux AMI and the alarms that I've setup are coming in all showing UT (universal time). It is inconvenient reading these alarms and I'd like them setup to read in eastern time zone (or America/New_York). I've already set my /etc/localtime to point to - /usr/share/zoneinfo/America/New_York ln… >>> More