AWS RDS Alerts

Set Up an SNS Topic

1. Open SNS Console

   • Log into the AWS Management Console and navigate to Amazon SNS section.

2. Create SNS Topic

   • Click Create topic.

   • Choose Standard as the topic type.

   • Give your topic a name (e.g., RDS-Alerts), then click Create topic.

3. Subscribe Email to SNS Topic

   • Once the topic is created, select the topic from the list.

   • Click Create subscription.

   • For Protocol, select Email.

   • Enter your email address in the Endpoint field where notifications will be sent.

   • Click Create subscription.

4. Confirm Subscription

   • Check your email for a confirmation message from AWS.

   • Click on the confirmation link to activate the subscription.

Create CloudWatch Alarm for RDS

1. Open CloudWatch Console

   • Log into the AWS Management Console and navigate to CloudWatch.

2. Create Alarm

   • In the CloudWatch dashboard, click on Alarms from the left-hand menu, then click Create alarm.

3. Select a Metric

   • Click on Select metric.

   • Navigate to RDS > Per-Database Metrics > DBInstanceIdentifier to choose a specific database.

   • Select a relevant metric (e.g., CPU Utilization, Free Storage Space, Read IOPS, Write IOPS).

4. Define Alarm Conditions

   • Set the Threshold type as either Static or Anomaly detection.

   • Choose the condition type:

     • For static thresholds, define a custom value, such as “CPU utilization > 80%”.

     • For anomaly detection, select the metric and let CloudWatch detect the anomaly.

5. Configure Actions

   • Under the Actions section, choose Send a notification to an SNS topic.

   • Select the SNS topic you created earlier (e.g., RDS-Alerts).

6. Set Alarm Name and Description

   • Name your alarm (e.g., RDS-CPU-High-Usage).

   • Optionally, you can add a description that dynamically includes the database name using ${DBInstanceIdentifier}.

7. Review and Create

   • Review your alarm configuration and click Create alarm.

Common Metrics for RDS CloudWatch Alarms

• CPUUtilization: Monitor high CPU usage.

• FreeableMemory: Ensure your database has enough memory (RAM) available

• FreeStorageSpace: Ensure your database has enough storage available.

• DatabaseConnections: Track the number of open connections.

• ReadIOPS / WriteIOPS: Monitor read and write I/O operations per second.

• ReadLatency / WriteLatency: Monitor delays in read/write operations.

• ReplicaLag: Monitor replication lag in a read-replica.