Instiq
Chapter 4 · Monitoring and Logging·v2.2.0·Updated 6/14/2026·~10 min

What's changed: In-scope coverage (fix): added a Trusted Advisor best-practice-checks block to §4.3 (closes an Axis-B textbook gap)

4.1Metrics and Alarms

Key points

Understand metric monitoring—CloudWatch metrics (standard/custom), alarms, composite alarms, dashboards, and EventBridge. Detect anomalies and drive notifications/automation.

Monitoring starts with metrics and alarms. CloudWatch collects metrics and triggers notifications/automation on threshold breach.

4.1.1CloudWatch metrics and alarms

Diagram of CloudWatch metric monitoring: standard metrics (auto-sent by EC2/RDS, etc.) and custom metrics (sent by apps via PutMetricData, e.g., memory usage or business KPIs) are aggregated; alarms fire on threshold breach; composite alarms combine multiple alarms logically to reduce false positives; dashboards visualize; and alarm state changes are received by EventBridge to trigger SNS notifications or automated actions (Lambda/Auto Scaling).
Metrics and alarms
  • Standard/custom metrics: standard are auto-collected; send custom (e.g., memory) via PutMetricData.
  • Alarms: transition OK/ALARM/INSUFFICIENT_DATA on thresholds and trigger actions.
  • Composite alarms: logically combine alarms to reduce false positives (noise).
  • EventBridge: react to alarms/events to trigger SNS/Lambda/Auto Scaling automatically.
Exam point

Common on DOP-C02: capture memory etc. = custom metrics (PutMetricData / CloudWatch Agent), combine conditions = composite alarms, alarm → notify/automate = SNS/EventBridge/Lambda. EC2 memory/disk are not standard metrics—use the CloudWatch Agent.

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