Customize AWS CloudWatch dashboards

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This document describes how to customize AWS CloudWatch dashboards.

AWS CloudWatch dashboards give you a good overview of what is going on in your environments and can show potential bottlenecks.

You might not be able to find memory or disk utilization metrics for some services and instances. This is an AWS limitation that can be solved by installing the CloudWatch Agent on the instances you want to monitor. To install the CloudWatch Agent, contact us.

Adding a new widget

In the instructions below, we customize an existing dashboard by adding a widget displaying CPU utilization of Jenkins. You can use the instructions with new dashboards and other services and metrics.

To add a widget displaying CPU utilization of Jenkins to a dashboard:

  1. In the AWS Management Console, go to Services > CloudWatch.

  2. In the navigation pane, select Dashboards. In the Dashboards pane, you can see the list of preconfigured dashboards.

  3. Select the dashboard you want to add the widget to. You should see preconfigured metrics, like CPU utilization and HTTP responses.

  4. Select Add widget.

  5. In the Add widget dialogue box, select Line.

widget type selection

  1. In the Add to this dashboard dialogue box, select Metrics.

  2. Since Jenkins is running on EC2, in the Metrics pane, select EC2 > Per-Instance Metrics.

metrics selection

  1. Select the scheduler instance with the CPUUtilization metric name.

  2. Select Create widget.

The dialogue box closes with the new widget displayed in the dashboard.

created widget

Customizing an existing widget

To customize an existing widget:

  1. At the top-right corner of the widget, select Widget actions > Edit.

widget actions in context

  1. In the Edit graph dialogue box, adjust the widget per your requirements.

  2. Select Update widget.