CloudWach & SSM (SSM)

The service allows to setup AWS CloudWatch monitoring over instances in private OpenStack regions. The integration is enabled due to the CloudWatch agent that is integrated with EPAM Orchestrator. The other tool, AWS Systems Management (SSM) Agent, is installed to target VMs after service activation.

Below, you can see a flowchart of data collection process performed by the service:

This topic contains the following sections:

Have a Question?

The current page gives the general information on the service and the main workflows. However, while working with the services, our users encounter new questions they need assistance with. The most frequently asked questions on EPAM Cloud Services are gathered on the Cloud Services FAQ page.
Visit the page to check whether we have a ready answer for your question.

Related CLI Commands

The table below provides the list of service-related commands and their descriptions:

Command Short Command Description
or2-manage-ssm or2ssm Initiates service activation
or2-cloud-watch-agent or2cwag Manages CloudWatch and SSM agents on VMs

Further on this page, you can find the examples of the commands usage for SSM Service manipulation.

Service Activation

To start the service, run the or2-manage-ssm (or2ssm) command and specify the target project, region and -a activate action:

or2-manage-ssm -p project -r region -a activate

On command call a record is created in EPAM Orchestrator database containing the necessary configs and AWS credentials necessary for metrics processing.

The service collects the following data:

Metrics Coment
CPU Utilization CPU Utilization statistics
Disk r/w bytes Disk load in bytes.
Disk r/w operations Disk load in operations.
Memory used The metrics combines used memory with RAM cash and the buffered memory.
Network in/out bytes Network traffic in bytes

Service Manipulations

  • To install SSM and CloudWatch agents and start monitoring an instance, run:
or2-cloud-watch-agent -p project -r region -i instanceID -a install

On command call CloudWatch Agent and SSM Agent are installed to the VM via a Chef role.

  • To retrieve the information about the instances covered by CloudWatch monitoring, run the same command with the -a describe parameter (you can also add -i instance_id to see the info on a specified instance):
or2-cloud-watch-agent -p project -r region -a describe
  • To stop monitoring a particular instance, use the command with the -a remove parameter:
or2-cloud-watch-agent -p project -r region -a remove
  • To deactivate the service, run the or2-manage-ssm (or2ssm) command with the -a deactivate parameter:
or2-manage-ssm -p project -r region -a deactivate

On command call, the record with AWS-related information is deleted from the EPAM Orchestrator database and the CloudWatch Agent monitoring becomes unavailable for all project members and instances.

Reviewing the results

The service data collected by CloudWatch is not available to the users via a Web UI interface. However, the metrics information can be reviewed as graphs on the Monitoring page:

Pricing

The service is provided for free and does not result into additional costs.

References

More information on the SSM Service can be found in the EPAM Cloud Services Guide. For detailed description of the Maestro CLI commands used to manage the SSM Service, refer to the Maestro CLI User Guide.

The information on this and other analytics capabilities of EPAM Cloud Analytics is given on the Cloud Analytics page.