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Amazon Web Service CloudWatch custom metrics with dimensions

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I'm trying to push data into a custom metric on AWS CloudWatch but wanted to find out more about the Dimensions and how these are used? I've already read the AWS documentation but it doesn't really explain what they are used for and how it affects the graphing UI in the AWS Management Console.

Are Dimensions a way to breakdown the Metric Value further?

To give a fictitious example, say I have a metric which counts the number of people in a room. The metric's name is called "Population". I report the count once a minute. The Metric Count is set to the number of people. The Dimension field is just a list of Name and Value pairs. Assuming I report a datapoint with a value of 90, can I add two Dimensions as follows: 1. Name: Male, Count: 50 2. Name: Female, Count: 40

Any help will be greatly appreciated.

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millie Avatar asked Jan 24 '13 16:01

millie


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You can use CloudWatch to create custom metrics and, through an SNS topic, have AMS alarm you appropriately.

What is dimension in CloudWatch metrics?

A dimension is a name/value pair that is part of the identity of a metric. You can assign up to 30 dimensions to a metric. Every metric has specific characteristics that describe it, and you can think of dimensions as categories for those characteristics. Dimensions help you design a structure for your statistics plan.

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1 Answers

Yes, you can add dimensions such as you described to your custom metrics.

However, CloudWatch is NOT able to aggregate across these dimensions, as it doesn't know the groups of these dimensions. Basically:

Amazon CloudWatch treats each unique combination of dimensions as a separate metric. For example, each call to mon-put-data in the following figure creates a separate metric because each call uses a different set of dimensions. This is true even though all four calls use the same metric name (ServerStats).

See more information about dimensions in CloudWatch here

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Guy Avatar answered Oct 21 '22 15:10

Guy