Monitor cluster data with Amazon CloudWatch - Amazon EKS
Basic metrics in Amazon CloudWatchAmazon CloudWatch Observability Operator

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Monitor cluster data with Amazon CloudWatch

Amazon CloudWatch is a monitoring service that collects metrics and logs from your cloud resources. CloudWatch provides some basic Amazon EKS metrics for free when using a new cluster that is version 1.28 and above. However, when using the CloudWatch Observability Operator as an Amazon EKS add-on, you can gain enhanced observability features.

Basic metrics in Amazon CloudWatch

For clusters that are Kubernetes version 1.28 and above, you get CloudWatch vended metrics for free in the AWS/EKS namespace. The following table gives a list of the basic metrics that are available for the supported versions. Every metric listed has a frequency of one minute.

Metric name Description

scheduler_schedule_attempts_total

The number of total attempts by the scheduler to schedule Pods in the cluster for a given period. This metric helps monitor the scheduler’s workload and can indicate scheduling pressure or potential issues with Pod placement.

Units: Count

Valid statistics: Sum

scheduler_schedule_attempts_SCHEDULED

The number of successful attempts by the scheduler to schedule Pods to nodes in the cluster for a given period.

Units: Count

Valid statistics: Sum

scheduler_schedule_attempts_UNSCHEDULABLE

The number of attempts to schedule Pods that were unschedulable for a given period due to valid constraints, such as insufficient CPU or memory on a node.

Units: Count

Valid statistics: Sum

scheduler_schedule_attempts_ERROR

The number of attempts to schedule Pods that failed for a given period due to an internal problem with the scheduler itself, such as API Server connectivity issues.

Units: Count

Valid statistics: Sum

scheduler_pending_pods

The number of total pending Pods to be scheduled by the scheduler in the cluster for a given period.

Units: Count

Valid statistics: Sum

scheduler_pending_pods_ACTIVEQ

The number of pending Pods in activeQ, that are waiting to be scheduled in the cluster for a given period.

Units: Count

Valid statistics: Sum

scheduler_pending_pods_UNSCHEDULABLE

The number of pending Pods that the scheduler attempted to schedule and failed, and are kept in an unschedulable state for retry.

Units: Count

Valid statistics: Sum

scheduler_pending_pods_BACKOFF

The number of pending Pods in backoffQ in a backoff state that are waiting for their backoff period to expire.

Units: Count

Valid statistics: Sum

scheduler_pending_pods_GATED

The number of pending Pods that are currently waiting in a gated state as they cannot be scheduled until they meet required conditions.

Units: Count

Valid statistics: Sum

apiserver_request_total

The number of HTTP requests made across all the API servers in the cluster.

Units: Count

Valid statistics: Sum

apiserver_request_total_4XX

The number of HTTP requests made to all the API servers in the cluster that resulted in 4XX (client error) status codes.

Units: Count

Valid statistics: Sum

apiserver_request_total_429

The number of HTTP requests made to all the API servers in the cluster that resulted in 429 status code, which occurs when clients exceed the rate limiting thresholds.

Units: Count

Valid statistics: Sum

apiserver_request_total_5XX

The number of HTTP requests made to all the API servers in the cluster that resulted in 5XX (server error) status codes.

Units: Count

Valid statistics: Sum

apiserver_request_total_LIST_PODS

The number of LIST Pods requests made to all the API servers in the cluster.

Units: Count

Valid statistics: Sum

apiserver_request_duration_seconds_PUT_P99

The 99th percentile of latency for PUT requests calculated from all requests across all API servers in the cluster. Represents the response time below which 99% of all PUT requests are completed.

Units: Seconds

Valid statistics: Average

apiserver_request_duration_seconds_PATCH_P99

The 99th percentile of latency for PATCH requests calculated from all requests across all API servers in the cluster. Represents the response time below which 99% of all PATCH requests are completed.

Units: Seconds

Valid statistics: Average

apiserver_request_duration_seconds_POST_P99

The 99th percentile of latency for POST requests calculated from all requests across all API servers in the cluster. Represents the response time below which 99% of all POST requests are completed.

Units: Seconds

Valid statistics: Average

apiserver_request_duration_seconds_GET_P99

The 99th percentile of latency for GET requests calculated from all requests across all API servers in the cluster. Represents the response time below which 99% of all GET requests are completed.

Units: Seconds

Valid statistics: Average

apiserver_request_duration_seconds_LIST_P99

The 99th percentile of latency for LIST requests calculated from all requests across all API servers in the cluster. Represents the response time below which 99% of all LIST requests are completed.

Units: Seconds

Valid statistics: Average

apiserver_request_duration_seconds_DELETE_P99

The 99th percentile of latency for DELETE requests calculated from all requests across all API servers in the cluster. Represents the response time below which 99% of all DELETE requests are completed.

Units: Seconds

Valid statistics: Average

apiserver_current_inflight_requests_MUTATING

The number of mutating requests (POST, PUT, DELETE, PATCH) currently being processed across all API servers in the cluster. This metric represents requests that are in-flight and haven’t completed processing yet.

Units: Count

Valid statistics: Sum

apiserver_current_inflight_requests_READONLY

The number of read-only requests (GET, LIST) currently being processed across all API servers in the cluster. This metric represents requests that are in-flight and haven’t completed processing yet.

Units: Count

Valid statistics: Sum

apiserver_admission_webhook_request_total

The number of admission webhook requests made across all API servers in the cluster.

Units: Count

Valid statistics: Sum

apiserver_admission_webhook_request_total_ADMIT

The number of mutating admission webhook requests made across all API servers in the cluster.

Units: Count

Valid statistics: Sum

apiserver_admission_webhook_request_total_VALIDATING

The number of validating admission webhook requests made across all API servers in the cluster.

Units: Count

Valid statistics: Sum

apiserver_admission_webhook_rejection_count

The number of admission webhook requests made across all API servers in the cluster that were rejected.

Units: Count

Valid statistics: Sum

apiserver_admission_webhook_rejection_count_ADMIT

The number of mutating admission webhook requests made across all API servers in the cluster that were rejected.

Units: Count

Valid statistics: Sum

apiserver_admission_webhook_rejection_count_VALIDATING

The number of validating admission webhook requests made across all API servers in the cluster that were rejected.

Units: Count

Valid statistics: Sum

apiserver_admission_webhook_admission_duration_seconds

The 99th percentile of latency for third-party admission webhook requests calculated from all requests across all API servers in the cluster. Represents the response time below which 99% of all third-party admission webhook requests are completed.

Units: Seconds

Valid statistics: Average

apiserver_admission_webhook_admission_duration_seconds_ADMIT_P99

The 99th percentile of latency for third-party mutating admission webhook requests calculated from all requests across all API servers in the cluster. Represents the response time below which 99% of all third-party mutating admission webhook requests are completed.

Units: Seconds

Valid statistics: Average

apiserver_admission_webhook_admission_duration_seconds_VALIDATING_P99

The 99th percentile of latency for third-party validating admission webhook requests calculated from all requests across all API servers in the cluster. Represents the response time below which 99% of all third-party validating admission webhook requests are completed.

Units: Seconds

Valid statistics: Average

apiserver_storage_size_bytes

The physical size in bytes of the etcd storage database file used by the API servers in the cluster. This metric represents the actual disk space allocated for the storage.

Units: Bytes

Valid statistics: Maximum

Amazon CloudWatch Observability Operator

Amazon CloudWatch Observability collects real-time logs, metrics, and trace data. It sends them to Amazon CloudWatch and AWS X-Ray. You can install this add-on to enable both CloudWatch Application Signals and CloudWatch Container Insights with enhanced observability for Amazon EKS. This helps you monitor the health and performance of your infrastructure and containerized applications. The Amazon CloudWatch Observability Operator is designed to install and configure the necessary components.

Amazon EKS supports the CloudWatch Observability Operator as an Amazon EKS add-on. The add-on allows Container Insights on both Linux and Windows worker nodes in the cluster. To enable Container Insights on Windows, the Amazon EKS add-on version must be 1.5.0 or higher. Currently, CloudWatch Application Signals isn’t supported on Amazon EKS Windows.

The topics below describe how to get started using CloudWatch Observability Operator for your Amazon EKS cluster.