AWS RDS Alerts

Set Up an SNS Topic

Open SNS Console
- Log into the AWS Management Console and navigate to Amazon SNS section.
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.
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.
Confirm Subscription
- Check your email for a confirmation message from AWS.
- Click on the confirmation link to activate the subscription.

Open CloudWatch Console
- Log into the AWS Management Console and navigate to CloudWatch.
Create Alarm
- In the CloudWatch dashboard, click on Alarms from the left-hand menu, then click Create alarm.
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).
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.
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).
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}.
Review and Create
- Review your alarm configuration and click Create alarm.