PRTG Manual: Amazon CloudWatch Sensor

This sensor type is deprecated. We provide the documentation in this section for your information only. We removed this sensor type from PRTG with version 16.x.25 (expected in May 2016). Your sensor will then stop monitoring and show a Down status.

See the following article for details and possible alternatives for deprecated sensors:

Knowledge Base: The PRTG Sensor Cleanup

• https://kb.paessler.com/en/topic/68227

Please use the current Amazon Cloudwatch sensors instead.

Region

Select the region in which the instance to be monitored runs:

• US East (Northern Virginia)
• US West (Oregon)
• US West (Northern California)
• EU (Ireland)
• Asia Pacific (Singapore)
• Asia Pacific (Tokyo)
• Asia Pacific (Sydney)
• South America (Sao Paulo)

The settings you select are valid for all sensors that you create when you finish this dialog.

Note: The CloudWatch option must be enabled for the instance that you want to monitor (you can do this, for example, using Amazon's AWS console).

Service Instance

Select the instances that you want to add a sensor for.

You see a list with the names of all items that you can monitor. Add check marks in front of the respective lines to select the desired items. You can also use the check box in the table header to select all items or cancel the selection.

PRTG creates one sensor for each selection.

Sensor Name

Enter a meaningful name to identify the sensor. By default, PRTG shows this name in the device tree, as well as in alarms, logs, notifications, reports, maps, libraries, and tickets.

Parent Tags

Shows tags that this sensor inherits from its parent device, group, and probe. This setting is shown for your information only and cannot be changed here.

Tags

Enter one or more tags. Confirm each tag with the Spacebar key, a comma, or the Enter key. You can use tags to group objects and use tag-filtered views later on. Tags are not case-sensitive. Tags are automatically inherited. You can add additional tags to the sensor. There are default tags that are automatically predefined in a sensor's settings when you add a sensor.

It is not possible to enter tags with a leading plus (+) or minus (-) sign, nor tags with parentheses (()) or angle brackets (<>).

Priority

Select a priority for the sensor. This setting determines where the sensor is placed in sensor lists. A sensor with a top priority is at the top of a list. Choose from one star (low priority) to five stars (top priority).

AWS Access Key ID

Enter your access key ID. You can obtain it from aws.amazon.com.

AWS Secret Access Key

Enter your secret access key. You can obtain it from aws.amazon.com.

Region

Shows the region your instance is located at. Once you have created the sensor, you cannot change this value. It is shown for reference purposes only. If you need to change this value, add the sensor anew.

Period (Interval)

Define in what granularity you want to receive datapoints from CloudWatch:

• 1 Minute
• 2 Minutes
• 5 Minutes
• 10 Minutes
• 30 Minutes
• 1 Hour

Service

Shows the service this sensor is monitoring. Once you have created the sensor, you cannot change this value. It is shown for reference purposes only. If you need to change this value, add the sensor anew.

Instance

Shows the Instance ID of the Amazon Web Services instance this sensor is monitoring. When using the SNS service, this field is not visible. Once you have created the sensor, you cannot change this value. It is shown for reference purposes only. If you need to change this value, add the sensor anew.

Topic Name

This field is only visible if you selected a "Simple Notification Service (SNS)" instance before. It shows the topic name that is monitored by this sensor. The sensor will show the number and size of messages published, and the number of notifications delivered and failed. Each sensor can monitor one topic name only. Once you have created the sensor, you cannot change this value. It is shown for reference purposes only. If you need to change this value, add the sensor anew.

Availability Zone

This field is only visible if you selected a "Elastic Load Balancing (ELB)" instance before. Enter the name of the Availability Zone of the Load Balancer that you want to monitor. If you leave this field empty, the average value of all zones will be taken.

Primary Channel

Select a channel from the list to define it as the primary channel. In the device tree, the last value of the primary channel is always displayed below the sensor's name. The available options depend on what channels are available for this sensor.

You can set a different primary channel later by clicking the pin symbol of a channel on the sensor's Overview tab.

Graph Type

Define how different channels are shown for this sensor:

• Show channels independently (default): Show a graph for each channel.
• Stack channels on top of each other: Stack channels on top of each other to create a multi-channel graph. This generates a graph that visualizes the different components of your total traffic.
  This option cannot be used in combination with manual Vertical Axis Scaling (available in the channel settings).

Stack Unit

This field is only visible if you enable Stack channels on top of each other as Graph Type. Select a unit from the list. All channels with this unit are stacked on top of each other. By default, you cannot exclude single channels from stacking if they use the selected unit. However, there is an advanced procedure to do so.

Schedule

Select a schedule from the list. Schedules can be used to monitor for a certain time span (days or hours) every week.

You can create schedules, edit schedules, or pause monitoring for a specific time span. For more information, see section Account Settings—Schedules.

Schedules are generally inherited. New schedules are added to schedules that you already set up, so all schedules are active at the same time.

Maintenance Window

Specify if you want to set up a one-time maintenance window. During a maintenance window, the selected object and all child objects are not monitored. They are in a Paused status instead. Choose between:

• Not set (monitor continuously): No maintenance window is set and monitoring is always active.
• Set up a one-time maintenance window: Pause monitoring within a maintenance window. You can define a time span for a monitoring pause below and change it even for an active maintenance window.

To terminate an active maintenance window before the defined end date, change the time entry in Maintenance Ends to a date in the past.

Maintenance Begins

This field is only visible if you enable Set up a one-time maintenance window above. Use the date time picker to enter the start date and time of the maintenance window.

Maintenance Ends

This field is only visible if you enable Set up a one-time maintenance window above. Use the date time picker to enter the end date and time of the maintenance window.

Dependency Type

Define a dependency type. You can use dependencies to pause monitoring for an object depending on the status of a different object. You can choose from:

• Use parent: Use the dependency type of the parent object.
• Select a sensor: Use the dependency type of the parent object. Additionally, pause the current object if a specific sensor is in a Down status or in a Paused status caused by another dependency.

• Master sensor for parent: Make this sensor the master object for its parent device. The sensor influences the behavior of its parent device: If the sensor is in a Down status, the device is paused. For example, it is a good idea to make a Ping sensor the master object for its parent device to pause monitoring for all other sensors on the device in case the device cannot even be pinged. Additionally, the sensor is paused if the parent group is paused by another dependency.

To test your dependencies, select Simulate Error Status from the context menu of an object that other objects depend on. A few seconds later, all dependent objects are paused. You can check all dependencies under Devices | Dependencies in the main menu bar.

Dependency

This field is only visible if you enable Select a sensor above. Click the Search button and use the object selector to select a sensor on which the current object will depend.

Dependency Delay (Sec.)

This field is only visible if you enable Select a sensor above. Define a time span in seconds for dependency delay.

After the master sensor for this dependency comes back to an Up status, monitoring of the dependent objects is additionally delayed by the defined time span. This can prevent false alarms, for example, after a server restart, by giving systems more time for all services to start up. Enter an integer value.

This setting is not available if you set this sensor to Use parent or to be the Master sensor for parent. In this case, define delays in the parent device settings or in its parent group settings.

User Group Access

Define the user groups that have access to the object. You see a table with user groups and group access rights. The table contains all user groups in your setup. For each user group, you can choose from the following group access rights:

• Inherited: Inherit the access rights settings of the parent object.
• No access: Users in this user group cannot see or edit the object. The object neither shows up in lists nor in the device tree.
  There is one exception: If a user in this user group has access to a child object, the parent object is visible in the device tree but users in this user group cannot access it.
• Read access: Users in this group can see the object and view its monitoring results. They cannot edit any settings.
• Write access: Users in this group can see the object, view its monitoring results, and edit its settings. They cannot edit its access rights settings.
• Full access: Users in this group can see the object, view its monitoring results, edit its settings, and edit its access rights settings.

To automatically set all child objects to inherit this object's access rights, enable the Revert children's access rights to inherited option.

For more details on access rights, see section Access Rights Management.

Channel Unit Types

For each type of channel, define the unit in which data is displayed. If defined on probe, group, or device level, these settings can be inherited to all sensors underneath. You can set units for the following channel types (if available):

• Bandwidth
• Memory
• Disk
• File
• Custom

Custom channel types can be set on sensor level only.

Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2)

• CPUUtilization
• NetworkIn
• NetworkOut
• DiskReadBytes
• DiskReadOps
• DiskWriteBytes
• DiskWriteOps
• CPUCreditUsage
• CPUCreditBalance
• StatusCheckFailed
• StatusCheckFailed_Instance
• StatusCheckFailed_System

Simple Queue Service (SQS)

• ApproximateNumberOfMessagesDelayed
• ApproximateNumberOfMessagesNotVisible
• ApproximateNumberOfMessagesVisible
• NumberOfEmptyReceives
• NumberOfMessagesDeleted
• NumberOfMessagesReceived
• NumberOfMessagesSent
• SentMessageSize

Elastic Load Balancing (ELB)

• RequestCount
• HealthyHostCount
• UnHealthyHostCount
• HTTPCode_Backend_2XX
• HTTPCode_Backend_3XX
• HTTPCode_Backend_4XX
• HTTPCode_Backend_5XX
• HTTPCode_ELB_4XX
• HTTPCode_ELB_5XX
• Latency

Elastic Block Store (EBS)

• VolumeIdleTime
• VolumeQueueLength
• VolumeReadBytes
• VolumeReadOps
• VolumeWriteBytes
• VolumeWriteOps
• VolumeTotalReadTime
• VolumeTotalWriteTime

Simple Notification Service (SNS)

• NumberOfMessagesPublished
• NumberOfNotificationsDelivered
• NumberOfNotificationsFailed
• PublishSize

Relational Database Service (RDS)

• CPUUtilization
• FreeableMemory
• DatabaseConnections
• FreeStorageSpace
• ReadIOPS
• WriteIOPS
• ReadLatency
• WriteLatency
• ReadThroughput
• WriteThroughput
• SwapUsage

ElastiCache

• BytesReadIntoMemcached
• BytesUsedForCacheItems
• BytesWrittenOutFromMemcached
• CasBadval
• CasHits
• CasMisses
• CmdFlush
• Cmdget
• Cmdset
• CPUUtilization
• CurrConnections
• CurrItems
• DecrHits
• DecrMisses
• DeleteHits
• DeleteMisses
• Evictions
• FreeableMemory
• GetHits
• GetMisses
• IncrHits
• IncrMisses
• NetworkBytesIn
• NetworkBytesOut
• NewConnections
• NewItems
• Reclaimed
• UnusedMemory