Introduction
Day 25 of the KodeKloud AWS Challenge focused on monitoring, not deployment — specifically, setting up a CloudWatch alarm to track EC2 CPU utilization and trigger alerts when thresholds are breached.
This is where many beginners stop paying attention, and where real production systems start failing.
Launching EC2 is easy. Knowing when it’s under stress is what keeps systems alive.
The task required:
- Launching an EC2 instance
- Monitoring CPU utilization
- Triggering alerts via an SNS topic when usage exceeds a critical threshold
Concept Explanation: CloudWatch Alarms + SNS (Why This Matters)
Amazon CloudWatch continuously collects metrics from AWS services, including EC2 CPU utilization.
A CloudWatch Alarm evaluates these metrics aga…
Introduction
Day 25 of the KodeKloud AWS Challenge focused on monitoring, not deployment — specifically, setting up a CloudWatch alarm to track EC2 CPU utilization and trigger alerts when thresholds are breached.
This is where many beginners stop paying attention, and where real production systems start failing.
Launching EC2 is easy. Knowing when it’s under stress is what keeps systems alive.
The task required:
- Launching an EC2 instance
- Monitoring CPU utilization
- Triggering alerts via an SNS topic when usage exceeds a critical threshold
Concept Explanation: CloudWatch Alarms + SNS (Why This Matters)
Amazon CloudWatch continuously collects metrics from AWS services, including EC2 CPU utilization.
A CloudWatch Alarm evaluates these metrics against defined conditions and can:
- Trigger notifications
- Invoke automation
- Act as an early warning system
SNS (Simple Notification Service) is used to fan out alerts to:
- SMS
- Other systems
In Amazon Web Services, this pairing (CloudWatch + SNS) is the foundation of operational awareness.
Get Kishor Bhairat’s stories in your inbox
Join Medium for free to get updates from this writer.
If you’re not monitoring, you’re guessing.