CODEWITHSUNDEEP
amazon-web-servicesamazon-cloudwatchamazon-cloudwatchlogs
Hexie
Hexie

Reputation: 4213

Cloudwatch - Metrics are expiring

I currently have a bunch of custom metric's based in multiple regions across our AWS account.

I thought I was going crazy but have now confirmed that the metric I created a while ago is expiring when not used for a certain time period (could be 2 weeks).

Here's my setup. I create a new metric on my log entry - which has no expiry date; enter image description here

I then go to the main page on CloudWatch --> then to Metrics to view any metrics (I understand this will only display new metric hits when there are hits that match the metric rule).

About 2 weeks ago, I had 9 Metrics logged under my "Custom Namespaces", and I now have 8 - as if it does not keep all the data: enter image description here

As far as i'm aware, all my metrics should stay in place (unless I remove them), however, it seems as though if these are not hit consistently, the data "expires", is that correct? If so, how are you meant to track historical data?

Thanks

Upvotes: 0

Views: 2145

Answers (1)

Dejan Peretin
Dejan Peretin

Reputation: 12089

CloudWatch will remove metrics from search if there was no new data published for that metric in the last 2 weeks.

This is mentioned in passing in the FAQ for EC2 metrics, but I think it applies to all metrics.

From 'will I lose the metrics data if I disable monitoring for an Amazon EC2 instance question' in the FAQ:

CloudWatch console limits the search of metrics to 2 weeks after a metric is last ingested to ensure that the most up to date instances are shown in your namespace.

Your data is still there however. Data adheres to a different retention policy.

You can still get your data if you know what the metric name is. If you added your metric to a dashboard, it will still be visible there. You can use CloudWatch PutDashboards API to add the metric to a dashboard or use CloudWatch GetMetricStatistics API to get the raw data.

Upvotes: 3

Related Questions