Using the metric query option to query CloudWatch Metrics Insights data

You can query CloudWatch Metrics Insights data by choosing the metric query mode in the Metric query editor.

CloudWatch Metrics Insights is a powerful high-performance SQL query engine that you can use to query your metrics at scale. It is a fast, flexible, SQL-based query engine that you can use to identify trends and patterns within all of your CloudWatch metrics in real time. It uses a dialect of SQL. For more information about the Metrics Insights query syntax, see Query syntax and keywords.

Query syntax and keywords

CloudWatch Metrics Insights uses a dialect of SQL. The following example shows the query syntax.

SELECT FUNCTION(metricName)
FROM namespace | [ SCHEMA(namespace[, labelKey [, ...] ]) ]
     [ WHERE labelKey OPERATOR labelValue [AND|OR|([...])*] [, ...] ]
[ GROUP BY labelKey [, ...]]
[ ORDER BY FUNCTION() [DESC | ASC] ]
[ LIMIT number]

Keywords are not case-sensitive, but the identifiers are case-sensitive. Identifiers include the names of metrics, namespaces, and dimensions.

The following table provides the query keywords and their descriptions.

The following are some examples:

Label values must be enclosed by single quotation marks.

Escape characters

In a query, label values must always be surrounded with single quotation marks.   For example, SELECT MAX(CPUUtilization) FROM "AWS/EC2" WHERE AutoScalingGroupName = 'my-production-fleet'.

Metric namespaces, metric names, and label keys that contain characters other than letters, numbers, and underscores (_) must be surrounded by double quotation marks. For example, SELECT MAX("My.Metric"). If one of these contains a double quotation mark itself (such as Bytes"Input"), you must escape that double quotation mark with backslashes, as in SELECT AVG("Bytes\"Input\""). If a metric namespace, metric name, or label key, contains a word that is a reserved keyword in Metrics Insights, these must also be enclosed in double quotation marks. For example, if you have a metric named LIMIT, you would use SELECT AVG("LIMIT"). It is also valid to enclose any namespace, metric name, or label in double quotation marks even if it does not include a reserved keyword.

Builder mode and code mode

You can create a query in Builder mode or Code mode.

To create a query in the builder mode:

Grafana automatically constructs a SQL query based on your selections.

To create a query in the code mode:

The code editor has a built-in autocomplete feature that gives suggestions for keywords, aggregations, namespaces, metrics, labels, and label values. The suggestions are shown when you enter a space, comma, or dollar sign. You can also use the keyboard combination CTRL+Space.

Code editor can autocomplete the query. However, use of template variables in the code editor might interfere with the autocompletion.

CloudWatch Metrics Insights examples

This section contains examples of useful CloudWatch Metrics Insights queries that you can copy and use directly or copy and modify in query editor. Some of these examples are already available in the console, and you can access them by choosing Add query in the Metrics view.

EC2 examples

View CPU utilization per instance metrics

SELECT AVG(CPUUtilization)
FROM "AWS/EC2"
GROUP BY InstanceId
    

View the average CPU utilization across the entire fleet

SELECT AVG(CPUUtilization)
FROM SCHEMA("AWS/EC2", InstanceId)
    

View the 10 instances with the highest average CPU utilization

SELECT MAX(CPUUtilization)
FROM "AWS/EC2"
GROUP BY InstanceId
LIMIT 10
    

View the 10 instances with the highest CPU utilization, ordered by the maximum, in descending order

SELECT AVG(CPUUtilization)
FROM "AWS/EC2"
GROUP BY InstanceId
ORDER BY MAX() DESC
LIMIT 10 

In this case, the CloudWatch agent is collecting a CPUUtilization metric per application. This query filters the average of this metric for a specific application name.

SELECT AVG(CPUUtilization)
FROM "AWS/CWAgent"
WHERE ApplicationName = 'eCommerce'
SELECT AVG(ConcurrentExecutions)
FROM "AWS/Lambda"

View average execution time for the top 10 Lambda functions, ordered by the maximum, in descending order

SELECT AVG(Duration)
FROM "AWS/Lambda"
GROUP BY FunctionName
ORDER BY MAX() DESC
LIMIT 10

View the maximum, average, and minimum of Lambda execution times

SELECT MAX(Duration)
FROM "AWS/Lambda"

Application Load Balancer examples

View metrics that have the dimensions LoadBalancer and AvailabilityZone

SELECT SUM(RequestCount)
FROM SCHEMA("AWS/ApplicationELB", LoadBalancer, AvailabilityZone)

View metrics with number of active concurrent TCP connections

SELECT AVG(ActiveConnectionCount)
FROM "AWS/ApplicationELB"

Amazon EBS examples

View top 10 average write bytes per volume in descending order

SELECT AVG(VolumeWriteBytes)
FROM "AWS/EBS"
GROUP BY VolumeId
ORDER BY MAX() DESC
LIMIT 10

View average Amazon EBS volume write time

SELECT AVG(VolumeTotalWriteTime)
FROM "AWS/EBS"

View average Amazon EBS volume idle time

SELECT AVG(VolumeIdleTime)
FROM "AWS/EBS"
View average burst balance per volume
SELECT AVG(BurstBalance)
FROM "AWS/EBS"
GROUP BY VolumeId
View average read bytes across Amazon EBS volumes
SELECT AVG(VolumeReadBytes)
FROM "AWS/EBS"

View average write bytes across Amazon EBS volumes

SELECT AVG(VolumeWriteBytes)
FROM "AWS/EBS"

Amazon Simple Storage Service examples

View average latency group by bucket name

SELECT AVG(TotalRequestLatency)
FROM "AWS/S3"
GROUP BY BucketName

View average number of objects per bucket across all Amazon S3 buckets

SELECT AVG(NumberOfObjects)
FROM "AWS/S3"
GROUP BY BucketName
    

Amazon Simple Notification Service examples

Amazon-simple-notificaation-service-examples

SELECT AVG(NumberOfMessagesPublished)
FROM "AWS/SNS"

View average number of messages failed for each topic name

SELECT AVG(NumberOfNotificationsFailed)
FROM "AWS/SNS"
GROUP BY TopicName

AWS API usage examples

View top 20 AWS APIs by the number of calls in your account

SELECT COUNT(CallCount)
FROM "AWS/Usage"
WHERE "Type" = 'API'
GROUP BY "Service", "Resource"
ORDER BY SUM() DESC
LIMIT 20

CloudWatch Metrics Insights limits

CloudWatch Metrics Insights currently has the following limits: