EC2 Health Monitor

Setting up an EC2 Health Monitor and Alerting system ensures your virtual servers remain operational by automatically identifying underlying infrastructure failures or operating system bugs. By leveraging native AWS tools like Amazon CloudWatch, Amazon EventBridge, and Amazon SNS, you can move from reactive troubleshooting to automated self-healing and instant notifications.

The primary components of a comprehensive EC2 health monitoring strategy are organized below. 1. Core Health Metrics to Track

AWS splits EC2 health into distinct monitoring layers. You must look at both external hypervisor-level checks and internal OS-level metrics. Status Checks

System Status Checks (StatusCheckFailed_System): Monitors the underlying AWS hardware and hypervisor hosting your instance. If this fails, it usually requires AWS intervention or a simple stop/start of the instance.

Instance Status Checks (StatusCheckFailed_Instance): Monitors the software and operating system level of your individual instance. Failures typically point to misconfigured boot files, corrupted file systems, or severe OS kernel panics.

Combined Status Check (StatusCheckFailed): Triggers if either of the two checks above returns a failing status (value of 1). Infrastructure Metrics AWS Cloudwatch Agent: The Basics and a Quick Tutorial