Updated EC2 Monitoring
On April 15th, we deployed an update to the EC2 Monitoring service with the following changes:
- We adjusted the default alert thresholds for CPU, Memory, and Filesystem to better represent true alarm conditions. After analyzing months of data collected from previous alarms, we determined the current default thresholds were set too low. As a result, we will be adjusting these level to values which will help to reduce false positives. Any custom alert levels that you requested will not be affected by this change.
- We identified an edge case where an EC2 instance will stop reporting metrics, but won't generate an alert. The EC2 instance hardware and Hypervisor may still be responding to status checks, but the server metrics are not reporting due to an application/OS "lock." To account for this, we are now capturing no-data events and generating alerts.
- We have made improvements to the language included in any EC2 alert tickets generated by Oxygen. We are now including more detail in the body of the alert as well as more information on next steps.
Realtime Alerting for Unmanaged Instances
We highlighted this feature in last month's update. The first step in implementing this feature has been to monitor the activity generated internally in order to get a better feel for the amount of alerts that may be generated and sent to your inbox. Our analysis identified the potential for a dramatic increase in alert "noise". For this reason, we have decided to change our strategy and only send a weekly alert via support ticket to notify you of any unmanaged instances in your account. The weekly alert will list any instances requiring SSM. Cloudticity support will take the lead on working with you to remediate these instances.
New Service: unified Logging
We highlighted this feature in January's update and are excited to announce Unified Logging is ready for general release! Cloudticity's Unified Logging service provides a logging solution that captures server access and security events, aggregating them in a single storage location for querying and visualization. We have built this system on native AWS services with an emphasis on providing a scalable, configurable system at a fraction of the cost to run similar systems using 3rd party solutions. If you are interested in learning more about this service please reach out Steven Middleton.
Coming Soon: Additional Oxygen Monitoring and Compliance Checks
We continue to enhance Cloudticity Oxygen as AWS releases new services and security requirements. Things we're working on for near-term release include: deeper checks for proper tagging, updating compliance checks, providing deeper RDS monitoring comparable to EC2 instances, and expanding checks for multi-region activity. We love suggestions, so please share your thoughts and use cases with support@cloudticity.com.