What does the AWS CloudWatch metric RequestCount mean?

Question

I'm trying to figure out the meaning of the AWS CloudWatch metric RequestCount. The only documentation I can find says The number of requests handled by the load balancer, which is remarkably unhelpful:

• Is this a total count or some sort of rate? The graphs don't show a monotonically increasing total value, which makes me doubt it is a total.

• Over what time period is this count/rate? Does it reset periodically?

• Why isn't the internet filled with people asking this question?

Answer 1

1. It will report a sum of all requests over the reporting period selected. If 1 min is selected, then you will get requests per minute.

2. This is selectable. Between 1 min and 1 day.