Set up, configure, and manage your application for monitoring from the CloudWatch console - Amazon CloudWatch
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Set up, configure, and manage your application for monitoring from the CloudWatch console

This section provides steps to set up, configure, and manage your application for monitoring from the CloudWatch console.

Add and configure an application

Add and configure an application from the CloudWatch console

To get started with CloudWatch Application Insights from the CloudWatch console, perform the following steps.

  1. Start. Open the CloudWatch console landing page. From the left navigation pane, under Insights, choose Application Insights. The page that opens shows the list of applications that are monitored with CloudWatch Application Insights, along with their monitoring status.

  2. Add an application. To set up monitoring for your application, choose Add an application. When you choose Add an application, you are prompted to Choose Application Type.

    • Resource group-based application. When you select this option, you can choose which resource groups in this account to monitor. To use multiple applications on a component, you must use resource group-based monitoring.

    • Account-based application. When you select this option, you can monitor all of the resources in this account. If you want to monitor all of the resources in an account, we recommend this option over the resource group-based option because the application onboarding process is faster.

    Note

    You can't combine resource group-based monitoring with account-based monitoring using Application Insights. In order to change the application type, you must delete all of the applications that are being monitored, and Choose Application Type.

    When you add your first application for monitoring, CloudWatch Application Insights creates a service-linked role in your account, which gives Application Insights permissions to call other AWS services on your behalf. For more information about the service-linked role created in your account by Application Insights, see Using service-linked roles for CloudWatch Application Insights.

  3. Resource-based application monitoring

    1. Select an application or resource group. On the Specify application details page, select the AWS resource group that contains your application resources from the dropdown list. These resources include front-end servers, load balancers, auto scaling groups, and database servers.

      If you have not created a resource group for your application, you can create one by choosing Create new resource group. For more information about creating resource groups, see the AWS Resource Groups User Guide.

    2. Notifications for problem insights. To view and get notified when problems are detected for selected applications, choose Amazon SNS notifications or Systems Manager OpsCenter Opsitems.

      1. Set up Amazon SNS notification (Recommended). Choose Select existing topic or Create new topic.

      2. Integrate with AWS Systems Manager OpsCenter. Under Advanced Settings, select the Generate Systems Manager OpsCenter OpsItems for remedial actions check box. To track the operations that are taken to resolve operational work items (OpsItems) that are related to your AWS resources, provide the Amazon SNS topic ARN.

    3. Monitor CloudWatch Events. Select the check box to integrate Application Insights monitoring with CloudWatch Events to get insights from Amazon EBS, Amazon EC2, AWS CodeDeploy, Amazon ECS, AWS Health APIs And Notifications, Amazon RDS, Amazon S3, and AWS Step Functions.

    4. Tags — optional. CloudWatch Application Insights supports both tag-based and CloudFormation-based resource groups (with the exception of Auto Scaling groups). For more information, see Working with Tag Editor.

    5. Choose Next.

      An ARN is generated for the application in the following format.

      arn:partition:applicationinsights:region:account-id:application/resource-group/resource-group-name

      Example

      arn:aws:applicationinsights:us-east-1:123456789012:application/resource-group/my-resource-group

    6. On the Review detected components page, under Review components for monitoring, the table lists the detected components and their associated detected workloads.

      Note

      For components that support multiple customized workloads, you can monitor up to five workloads for each component. These workloads will be monitored separately from the component.

      The detected components section of the CloudWatch Application Insights console: overview of detected components and associated workloads.

      Under Associated workloads, there are several possible messages that appear if a workload is not listed.

      • Couldn't detect workloads – An issue occurred when trying to detect workloads. Make sure that you have completed the Prerequisites to configure an application for monitoring. If you need to add workloads, choose Edit component.

      • No workloads detected – We didn't detect any workloads. You may need to add workloads. To do so, choose Edit component.

      • Not applicable – The component doesn't support customized workloads and will be monitored with default metrics, alarms, and logs. You can't add workloads to these components.

    7. To edit a component, select a component, and then choose Edit component. A side panel opens with workloads detected on the component. In this panel, you can edit the component details and add new workloads.

      The review detected components section of the CloudWatch Application Insights console: associated workloads can be edited.

      • To edit the workload type or name, use the dropdown list.

        The Edit component section of the CloudWatch Application Insights console: dropdown list of workload type.

      • To add a workload to the component, choose Add new workload.

        The edit component section of the CloudWatch Application Insights console: lower left button to add a new workload.

        • If Add new workload doesn't appear, this component doesn't support multiple workloads.

        • If the Associated workloads heading doesn't appear, this component doesn't support customized workloads.

      • To remove a workload, choose Remove next to the workload that you want to remove from monitoring.

        The edit component section of the CloudWatch Application Insights console: remove a workload.

      • To disable monitoring for the entire component, clear the Monitoring check box.

        The edit component section of the CloudWatch Application Insights check box to disable monitoring.

      • When you are done editing the component, choose Save changes in the lower right corner. Any changes to workloads for a component are visible on the Review components for monitoring table under Associated workloads.

    8. On the Review detected components page, choose Next.

    9. The Specify component details page includes all components with customizable associated workloads from the previous step.

      Note

      If a component header has an optional tag, additional details for the workloads in that component are optional.

      If a component doesn't appear on this page, the component doesn't have any additional details that can be specified in this step.

    10. Choose Next.

    11. On the Review and submit page, review all monitored component and workload details.

    12. Choose Submit.

    Account-based application monitoring

    1. Application name. Enter a name for your account-based application.

    2. Automated monitoring of new resources. By default, Application Insights uses recommended settings to configure monitoring for resource components that are added to your account after you onboard the application. You can exclude monitoring for resources added after onboarding your application by clearing the check box.

    3. Monitor CloudWatch Events. Select the check box to integrate Application Insights monitoring with CloudWatch Events to get insights from Amazon EBS, Amazon EC2, AWS CodeDeploy, Amazon ECS, AWS Health APIs And Notifications, Amazon RDS, Amazon S3, and AWS Step Functions.

    4. Integrate with AWS Systems Manager OpsCenter. To view and get notified when problems are detected for selected applications, select the Generate Systems Manager OpsCenter OpsItems for remedial actions check box. To track the operations that are taken to resolve operational work items (OpsItems) that are related to your AWS resources, provide the SNS topic ARN.

    5. Tags — optional. CloudWatch Application Insights supports both tag-based and CloudFormation-based resource groups (with the exception of Auto Scaling groups). For more information, see Working with Tag Editor.

    6. Discovered resources. All of the resources discovered in your account are added to this list. If Application Insights is unable to discover all of the resources in your account, an error message appears at the top of the page. This message includes a link to the documentation for how to add the required permissions.

    7. Choose Next.

      An ARN is generated for the application in the following format.

      arn:partition:applicationinsights:region:account-id:application/TBD/application-name

      Example

      arn:aws:applicationinsights:us-east-1:123456789012:application/TBD/my-application

  4. After you submit your application monitoring configuration, you will be taken to the details page for the application, where you can view the Application summary, the list of Monitored components and Unmonitored components, and, by selecting the tabs next to Components, the Configuration history, Log patterns, and any Tags that you have applied.

    To view insights for the application, choose View Insights.

    You can update your selections for CloudWatch Events monitoring and integration with AWS Systems Manager OpsCenter by choosing Edit.

    Under Components, you can select the Actions menu to Create, Modify, or Ungroup an instance group.

    You can manage monitoring for components, including application tier, log groups, event logs, metrics, and custom alarms, by selecting the bullet next to a component and choosing Manage monitoring.

Enable Application Insights for Amazon ECS and Amazon EKS resource monitoring

You can enable Application Insights to monitor containerized applications and microservices from the Container Insights console. Application Insights supports monitoring for the following resources:

  • Amazon ECS clusters

  • Amazon ECS services

  • Amazon ECS tasks

  • Amazon EKS clusters

When Application Insights is enabled, it provides recommended metrics and logs, detects potential problems, generates CloudWatch Events, and creates automatic dashboards for your containerized applications and microservices.

You can enable Application Insights for containerized resources from the Container Insights or Application Insights consoles.

Enable Application Insights from the Container Insights console

From the Container Insights console, on the Container Insights Performance monitoring dashboard, choose Auto-configure Application Insights. When Application Insights is enabled, it displays details about detected problems.

Enable Application Insights from the Application Insights console

When ECS clusters appear in the component list, Application Insights automatically enables additional container monitoring with Container Insights.

For EKS clusters, you can enable additional monitoring with Container Insights to provide diagnostics information, such as container restart failures, to help you isolate and resolve problems. Additional steps are required to set up Container Insights for EKS. For information, see Setting up Container Insights on Amazon EKS and Kubernetes for steps to set up Container Insights on EKS.

Additional monitoring for EKS with Container Insights is supported on Linux instances with EKS.

For more information about Container Insights support for ECS and EKS clusters, see Container Insights.

Disable monitoring for an application component

To disable monitoring for an application component, from the application details page, select the component for which you want to disable monitoring. Choose Actions, and then Remove from monitoring.

Delete an application

To delete an application, from the CloudWatch dashboard, on the left navigation pane, choose Application Insights under Insights. Select the application that you want to delete. Under Actions, choose Delete application. This deletes monitoring and deletes all of the saved monitors for application components. The application resources are not deleted.