# Amazon ECS service utilization metrics use cases
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The following list provides information about when to use the Amazon ECS metrics.
+ **Resource utilization monitoring**: Use average statistics to monitor CPU and memory consumption patterns, establish performance baselines, and detect gradual performance degradation trends.
+ **Cost optimization**: Use average statistics to monitor resource usage, right-size containers, adjust reservations based on usage patterns, and implement scheduled scaling.
+ **Performance benchmarking**: Use average statistics to compare metrics between service revisions, establish performance KPIs, and validate optimization improvements.
+ **Resource floor detection**: Use average statistics to identify minimum resource needs during idle periods, set appropriate reservations, and detect abnormal drops.
+ **Anomaly detection**: Use minimum statistics to spot unusual resource utilization drops that indicate potential problems, such as initialization failures or unexpected idle periods.
+ **Scaling policy refinement**: Use minimum statistics to establish optimal scale-in thresholds based on minimum viable utilization to prevent aggressive scaling.
+ **Capacity planning**: Use maximum statistics to set appropriate task sizes and plan infrastructure with sufficient headroom for traffic spikes.
+ **Performance bottleneck identification**: Use maximum statistics to detect resource saturation points, identify bottlenecks, and determine when to increase task size.
+ **Scaling policy configuration**: Use maximum statistics to set optimal scale-out thresholds based on peak patterns and configure burst capacity.
+ **SLA compliance monitoring**: Use maximum statistics to track peak response times and error rates to ensure service performance meets defined SLAs.

## Related metrics information
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For information about Container Insights, see [Container Insights use cases](https://docs.aws.amazon.com/AmazonCloudWatch/latest/monitoring/ecs-container-insights-use-metrics-cases.html) in the* CloudWatch User Guide*.