AWS Health Monitoring default checks and policies

  • Release version: Zurich
  • Updated July 31, 2025
  • 3 minutes to read
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    Summary of AWS Health Monitoring default checks and policies

    The Agent Client Collector for ServiceNow provides a comprehensive set of default checks and policies designed for monitoring AWS resources. These checks enable automated collection and reporting of key performance and health metrics across various AWS services including EC2, EBS, S3, RDS, Elastic Load Balancers (ELB), DynamoDB, and ECS clusters and services. This monitoring capability supports proactive management and visibility into AWS infrastructure health within your ServiceNow environment.

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    Key Features

    • EC2 Metrics: Collects metrics for all EC2 instances with options to filter by tags and control batch size for parallel metric fetching.
    • EBS Metrics: Monitors EBS volumes with tag filtering and adjustable batch sizing.
    • S3 Metrics: Gathers metrics for S3 buckets, allowing batch size customization.
    • RDS Metrics: Retrieves metrics for RDS databases with tag-based filtering and batch size control.
    • Elastic Load Balancers Metrics: Supports classic, network, and application ELBs with options to exclude specific load balancers by name patterns and configure batch sizes. Note that command prefixes should remain unchanged.
    • EC2 Instance Counts: Provides counts of EC2 instances categorized by instance type or status, with customizable metric naming schemes.
    • DynamoDB Metrics: Monitors DynamoDB tables, supports exclusion of specific tables by name, and batch size configuration.
    • ECS Metrics: Covers ECS clusters and services with tag filtering and batch size options, binding to respective CI types in ServiceNow.

    Practical Usage and Configuration

    Each check is executed via a specific command script with parameters to customize filtering by tags or names, exclude certain resources, and control the number of parallel requests (batch size). Filters must be provided as string representations enclosed in double quotes. Batch sizes should be adjusted based on the agent environment to optimize performance.

    For example, to fetch EC2 instance metrics filtered by environment tags, use:

    ./metrics-ec2.rb -F "{name:tag:environment,values:[ENV1,ENV2]}"

    To exclude certain load balancers when collecting ELB metrics, specify their name patterns as comma-separated strings in double quotes:

    ./metrics-elb.rb -t classic -e "classic,itom,ip" -b 10

    These configurations allow ServiceNow customers to tailor AWS monitoring to their specific environments, ensuring relevant data collection and efficient resource utilization.

    Agent Client Collector provides the following default checks and policies for AWS monitoring.

    Table 1. AWS Metrics policy
    Type Check Description Usage Usage example
    Metric aws.metrics-ec2 Returns metrics of all EC2 instances in a AWS Datacenter.

    metrics-ec2.rb (options)

    -F, --filter FILTER String representation of the filter to filter EC2 instances by tags.

    -b, --batch_size BATCH_SIZE Batch size. Number of instances to fetch metrics in parallel. (Default value: 10)

    ./metrics-ec2.rb -F "{name:tag:environment,values:[ENV1,ENV2]} {name:tag:Name,values:[Instance1,Instance2]}"

    Provide the filter string along with double quotes ("") around the filter parameter.

    Set the batch_size parameter according to the agent environment.
    Metric aws.metrics-ebs Returns metrics of all EBS volumes in an AWS datacenter.

    metrics-ebs.rb (options)

    -F, --filter FILTER String representation of the filter to filter EBS Volumes by Tags.

    -b, --batch_size BATCH_SIZE Batch size. Number of volumes to fetch metrics parallelly. (Default value: 10)

    ./metrics-ebs.rb -F "{name:tag:environment,values:[ENV1,ENV2]} {name:tag:Name,values:[Volume1,Volume2]}"

    Provide filter string along with double quotes ("") for the filter parameter.

    Set the batch_size parameter according to the agent environment.
    Metric aws.metrics-s3 Returns metrics of all S3 buckets in an AWS datacenter.

    metrics-s3.rb (options)

    -b, --batch_size BATCH_SIZE Batch size. Number of S3 buckets to fetch metrics in parallel. (Default value: 10)

    ./metrics-s3.rb -b 5

    Set the batch_size parameter according to the agent environment.
    Metric aws.metrics-rds Returns metrics of all RDS buckets in an AWS datacenter.

    metrics-rds.rb (options)

    -F, --filter FILTER String representation of the filter to filter RDS Instances by tags.

    -b, --batch_size BATCH_SIZE Batch size. Number of databases to fetch metrics in parallel. (Default value: 10)

    		 ./metrics-rds.rb -F "{name:tag:environment,values:[ENV1,ENV2]} {name:tag:engine,values:[MariaDB]}"

    Provide the filter string with double quotes ("") around the filter parameter.

    Set the batch_size parameter according to the agent environment.
    Metric aws.metrics-classic-elb Returns metrics of all classic elastic load balancers in an AWS datacenter.

    metrics-elb.rb (options)

    -e, --exclude_lb EXCLUDE_LB Exclude metrics from load balancers whose name contains one of the comma separated strings.

    -b, --batch_size BATCH_SIZE Batch size. Number of databases to fetch metrics in parallel. (Default value: 10)

    ./metrics-elb.rb -t classic -e "classic,itom,ip" -b 10

    Provide comma separated strings in double quotes ("") for the exclude_lb parameter.

    Set the batch_size parameter according to the agent environment.
    Metric aws.metrics-network-elb Returns metrics of all network elastic load balancers in an AWS datacenter.

    metrics-elb.rb (options)

    -e, --exclude_lb EXCLUDE_LB Exclude metrics from load balancers whose name contains any of the comma separated strings.

    -b, --batch_size BATCH_SIZE Batch size. Number of databases to fetch metrics in parallel. (Default value: 10)

    ./metrics-elb.rb -t network -e "vpc,itom,ip" -b 10

    Provide comma separated strings in double quotes ("") for the exclude_lb parameter.

    Set the batch_size parameter according to the agent environment.

    Do not change the command prefix.
    Metric aws.metrics-application-elb Returns metrics of all application elastic load balancers in an AWS datacenter.

    metrics-elb.rb (options)

    -e, --exclude_lb EXCLUDE_LB Exclude metrics from load balancers whose name contains any one of the string from comma separated strings.

    -b, --batch_size BATCH_SIZE Batch size. Number of databases to fetch metrics in parallel. (Default value: 10)

    ./metrics-elb.rb -t application -e "classic,app,ip" -b 10

    Provide comma separated strings in double quotes ("") for the exclude_lb parameter.

    Set the batch_size parameter according to the agent environment.

    Do not change the command prefix.
    Metric aws.metrics-ec2-count Returns count of EC2 instances by instance_type or status in an AWS datacenter.

    metrics-ec2-count.rb (options)

    -s, --scheme SCHEME Metric naming scheme, text to prepend to metric. Default: aws.ec2

    -t, --type METRIC type Count by type: status, instance. Default: instance

    ./metrics-ec2-count.rb -t status

    ./metrics-ec2-count.rb -t status -s metric.aws.ec2
    Table 2. AWS DynamoDB metrics
    Type Check Description Usage Command
    Metric aws.metrics-dynamodb Monitors the health of DynamoDB tables in an AWS datacenter.

    Binds to the DynamoDB table (cmdb_ci_dynamodb_table)

    e, --exclude_tb EXCLUDE_TB

    Exclude metrics from tables whose name contains a string from comma separated strings.

    b, --batch_size BATCH_SIZE

    Batch size. Number of tables to fetch metrics in parallel. (Default value: 10)    		 metrics-dynamodb.rb -r {{.labels.params_ci_region}} {{.labels.params_exclude_tb}} -f {{.labels.params_exclude_tb}} {{end}} {{.labels.params_batch_size}} -b {{.labels.params_filter}} {{end}}
    Table 3. AWS EC2 metrics
    Type Check Description Usage Command
    Metric aws.metrics-ecs-cluster Monitors ECS clusters in an AWS datacenter.

    Binds to the AWS ECS Cluster CI type (cmdb_ci_cloud_ecs_cluster)

    -F, --filter FILTER

    String representation of the filter to filter ECS clusters by tags.

    b, --batch_size BATCH_SIZE

    Batch size. Number of clusters to fetch metrics in parallel. (Default value: 10)    		 metrics-ecs-cluster.rb -r {{.labels.params_ci_region}} {{.labels.params_filter}} -f {{.labels.params_filter}} {{end}} {{.labels.params_batch_size}} -b {{.labels.params_filter}} {{end}}
    Metric aws.metrics-ecs-service Monitors ECS services in an AWS datacenter.

    Binds to the AWS ECS Service CI type (cmdb_ci_cloud_ecs_service)

    -F, --filter FILTER

    String representation of the filter to filter ECS clusters by tags.

    b, --batch_size BATCH_SIZE

    Batch size. Number of clusters to fetch metrics in parallel. (Default value: 10)    		 metrics-ecs-service.rb -r {{.labels.params_ci_region}} {{.labels.params_filter}} -f {{.labels.params_filter}} {{end}} {{.labels.params_batch_size}} -b {{.labels.params_filter}} {{end}}