Amazon CloudWatch alarm action scenarios

You can use the Amazon EC2 console to create alarm actions that stop or terminate an Amazon EC2 instance when certain conditions are met. In the following screen capture of the console page where you set the alarm actions, we've numbered the settings. We've also numbered the settings in the scenarios that follow, to help you create the appropriate actions.

Scenario 1: Stop idle development and test instances

Create an alarm that stops an instance used for software development or testing when it has been idle for at least an hour.

Scenario 2: Stop idle instances

Create an alarm that stops an instance and sends an email when the instance has been idle for 24 hours.

Scenario 3: Send email about web servers with unusually high traffic

Create an alarm that sends email when an instance exceeds 10 GB of outbound network traffic per day.

Scenario 4: Stop web servers with unusually high traffic

Create an alarm that stops an instance and send a text message (SMS) if outbound traffic exceeds 1 GB per hour.

Scenario 5: Stop an impaired instance

Create an alarm that stops an instance that fails three consecutive status checks (performed at 5-minute intervals).

Scenario 6: Terminate instances when batch processing jobs are complete

Create an alarm that terminates an instance that runs batch jobs when it is no longer sending results data.