Monitoring memory usage in AWS CloudWatch for Windows instance

Question

By default, memory usage isn’t monitored by CloudWatch. So I tried to add it to my Windows instance in AWS using these instructions.

This is what I did:

1. I created a user named custom-metrics-user. Then I stored the access and secret key.

2. I created and attached an Inline Policy to the user. it looks like this:

   { 
     "Version": "2012-10-17", 
     "Statement": [ 
       { 
         "Effect": "Allow", 
         "Action": ["cloudwatch:PutMetricData", "cloudwatch:GetMetricStatistics", "cloudwatch:ListMetrics", "ec2:DescribeTags"], 
         "Resource": "*" 
       } 
     ] 
   }
   

3. I launched a Windows Instance [2012 R2 Base AMI]. After accessing the instance through RDP, I found that the AWS.EC2.Windows.CloudWatch.json file is already present.

4. I changed that .json file accordingly. After changing it, it looks like this:

   {
       "EngineConfiguration": {
           "PollInterval": "00:00:15",
           "Components": [
               {
                   "Id": "ApplicationEventLog",
                   "FullName": "AWS.EC2.Windows.CloudWatch.EventLog.EventLogInputComponent,AWS.EC2.Windows.CloudWatch",
                   "Parameters": {
                       "LogName": "Application",
                       "Levels": "1"
                   }
               },
               {
                   "Id": "SystemEventLog",
                   "FullName": "AWS.EC2.Windows.CloudWatch.EventLog.EventLogInputComponent,AWS.EC2.Windows.CloudWatch",
                   "Parameters": {
                       "LogName": "System",
                       "Levels": "7"
                   }
               },
               {
                   "Id": "SecurityEventLog",
                   "FullName": "AWS.EC2.Windows.CloudWatch.EventLog.EventLogInputComponent,AWS.EC2.Windows.CloudWatch",
                   "Parameters": {
                   "LogName": "Security",
                   "Levels": "7"
                   }
               },
               {
                   "Id": "ETW",
                   "FullName": "AWS.EC2.Windows.CloudWatch.EventLog.EventLogInputComponent,AWS.EC2.Windows.CloudWatch",
                   "Parameters": {
                       "LogName": "Microsoft-Windows-WinINet/Analytic",
                       "Levels": "7"
                   }
               },
               {
                   "Id": "IISLog",
                   "FullName": "AWS.EC2.Windows.CloudWatch.IisLog.IisLogInputComponent,AWS.EC2.Windows.CloudWatch",
                   "Parameters": {
                       "LogDirectoryPath": "C:\\inetpub\\logs\\LogFiles\\W3SVC1"
                   }
               },
               {
                   "Id": "CustomLogs",
                   "FullName": "AWS.EC2.Windows.CloudWatch.CustomLog.CustomLogInputComponent,AWS.EC2.Windows.CloudWatch",
                   "Parameters": {
                       "LogDirectoryPath": "C:\\CustomLogs\\",
                       "TimestampFormat": "MM/dd/yyyy HH:mm:ss",
                       "Encoding": "UTF-8",
                       "Filter": "",
                       "CultureName": "en-US",
                       "TimeZoneKind": "Local"
                   }
               },
               {
                   "Id": "PerformanceCounter",
                   "FullName": "AWS.EC2.Windows.CloudWatch.PerformanceCounterComponent.PerformanceCounterInputComponent,AWS.EC2.Windows.CloudWatch",
                   "Parameters": {
                       "CategoryName": "Memory",
                       "CounterName": "Available MBytes",
                       "InstanceName": "",
                       "MetricName": "Memory",
                       "Unit": "Megabytes",
                       "DimensionName": "InstanceId",
                       "DimensionValue": "{instance_id}"
                   }
               },
               {
                   "Id": "CloudWatchLogs",
                   "FullName": "AWS.EC2.Windows.CloudWatch.CloudWatchLogsOutput,AWS.EC2.Windows.CloudWatch",
                   "Parameters": {
                       "AccessKey": "",
                       "SecretKey": "",
                       "Region": "us-east-1",
                       "LogGroup": "Default-Log-Group",
                       "LogStream": "{instance_id}"
                   }
               },
               {
                   "Id": "CloudWatch",
                   "FullName": "AWS.EC2.Windows.CloudWatch.CloudWatch.CloudWatchOutputComponent,AWS.EC2.Windows.CloudWatch",
                   "Parameters": 
                   {
                       "AccessKey": "AKIAIK2U6EU675354BQ",
                       "SecretKey": "nPyk9ntdwW0y5oaw8353fsdfTi0e5/imx5Q09vz",
                       "Region": "us-east-1",
                       "NameSpace": "System/Windows"
                   }
               }
           ],
           "Flows": {
               "Flows": 
               [
                   "PerformanceCounter,CloudWatch"
               ]
           }
       } 
   }
   

5. I enabled CloudWatch Logs integration under EC2ConfigSettings.

6. I restarted the EC2Config Service.

I got no errors but the Memory metric isn't being shown in the Cloud Watch console. The blog says to wait for 10-15 minutes for the metric to appear, but it has already been an hour since I have done it. What’s going wrong?

Answer 1

First, you need to add an IAM role to your instance:

{
    "Version": "2012-10-17",
    "Statement": [
        {
            "Sid": "AllowAccessToSSM",
            "Effect": "Allow",
            "Action": [
                "cloudwatch:PutMetricData",
                "logs:CreateLogGroup",
                "logs:CreateLogStream",
                "logs:DescribeLogGroups",
                "logs:DescribeLogStreams",
                "logs:PutLogEvents"
            ],
            "Resource": [
                "*"
            ]
        }
    ]
}

Note that you cannot add a role to an existing instance. So do it before launching. Then you need to configure the EC2Config file (normally) accessible via the following path:

C:\Program Files\Amazon\Ec2ConfigService\Settings.AWS.EC2.Windows.CloudWatch.json

You should add the following block to the JSON file:

...

{
    "Id": "PerformanceCounter",
    "FullName": "AWS.EC2.Windows.CloudWatch.PerformanceCounterComponent.PerformanceCounterInputComponent,AWS.EC2.Windows.CloudWatch",
    "Parameters": {
        "CategoryName": "Memory",
        "CounterName": "Available MBytes",
        "InstanceName": "",
        "MetricName": "Memory",
        "Unit": "Megabytes",
        "DimensionName": "InstanceId",
        "DimensionValue": "{instance_id}"
    }
}

...

{
    "Id": "CloudWatch",
    "FullName": "AWS.EC2.Windows.CloudWatch.CloudWatch.CloudWatchOutputComponent,AWS.EC2.Windows.CloudWatch",
    "Parameters": 
    {
        "AccessKey": "",
        "SecretKey": "",
        "Region": "eu-west-1",
        "NameSpace": "PerformanceMonitor"
    }
}

Do not forget to restart the EC2Config service on your server after changing the config file. You should be able to get the memory metrics after a couple of minutes in your CloudWatch console. The level of CloudWatch monitoring on your instance should also be set to detailed:

Update:

According to the documentation, you can now attach or modify an IAM role to your existing instance.