CloudWatch dashboards in AWS - Mini Project: Build & Apply

Create a Simple AWS CloudWatch Dashboard

📖 Scenario: You are a cloud engineer setting up monitoring for a web application hosted on AWS. You want to create a CloudWatch dashboard to visualize key metrics like CPU utilization and network traffic.

🎯 Goal: Build a CloudWatch dashboard JSON configuration that shows two widgets: one for CPU utilization and one for network in/out for an EC2 instance.

📋 What You'll Learn

Create a dashboard body JSON structure with widgets array

Add a widget for CPUUtilization metric from EC2 namespace

Add a widget for NetworkIn and NetworkOut metrics from EC2 namespace

Use correct metric dimensions with InstanceId

Use valid JSON structure deployable to AWS CloudWatch

💡 Why This Matters

🌍 Real World

CloudWatch dashboards help visualize and monitor AWS resource metrics in one place, making it easier to spot issues and optimize performance.

💼 Career

Cloud engineers and DevOps professionals often create and maintain dashboards to ensure system health and respond quickly to alerts.

1

Create the initial dashboard JSON structure

Create a variable called dashboard_body and assign it a JSON string with an empty widgets array: {"widgets": []}.

AWS

# Create a variable called dashboard_body with an empty widgets array
# Your code here

Need a hint?

Use single quotes outside and double quotes inside for the JSON string.

2

Add a CPU Utilization widget configuration

Add a variable called cpu_widget and assign it a JSON object string representing a CloudWatch metric widget for CPUUtilization metric in the AWS/EC2 namespace with dimension InstanceId set to i-1234567890abcdef0. The widget should have a width of 6 and height of 6.

AWS

dashboard_body = '{"widgets": []}'
# Add a cpu_widget JSON string for CPUUtilization metric
# Your code here

Need a hint?

Follow AWS CloudWatch metric widget JSON format with properties including metrics array.

3

Add a Network In/Out widget configuration

Add a variable called network_widget and assign it a JSON object string representing a CloudWatch metric widget for NetworkIn and NetworkOut metrics in the AWS/EC2 namespace with dimension InstanceId set to i-1234567890abcdef0. The widget should have a width of 6 and height of 6.

AWS

dashboard_body = '{"widgets": []}'
cpu_widget = '{"type": "metric", "x": 0, "y": 0, "width": 6, "height": 6, "properties": {"metrics": [["AWS/EC2", "CPUUtilization", "InstanceId", "i-1234567890abcdef0"]], "period": 300, "stat": "Average", "region": "us-east-1", "title": "EC2 CPU Utilization"}}'
# Add a network_widget JSON string for NetworkIn and NetworkOut metrics
# Your code here

Need a hint?

Include both NetworkIn and NetworkOut metrics in the metrics array.

4

Combine widgets into the dashboard body

Update the dashboard_body variable to include the cpu_widget and network_widget JSON objects inside the widgets array. Use Python's json module to parse and combine the JSON strings properly.

AWS

dashboard_body = '{"widgets": []}'
cpu_widget = '{"type": "metric", "x": 0, "y": 0, "width": 6, "height": 6, "properties": {"metrics": [["AWS/EC2", "CPUUtilization", "InstanceId", "i-1234567890abcdef0"]], "period": 300, "stat": "Average", "region": "us-east-1", "title": "EC2 CPU Utilization"}}'
network_widget = '{"type": "metric", "x": 6, "y": 0, "width": 6, "height": 6, "properties": {"metrics": [["AWS/EC2", "NetworkIn", "InstanceId", "i-1234567890abcdef0"], ["AWS/EC2", "NetworkOut", "InstanceId", "i-1234567890abcdef0"]], "period": 300, "stat": "Sum", "region": "us-east-1", "title": "EC2 Network Traffic"}}'
# Combine cpu_widget and network_widget into dashboard_body widgets array
# Your code here

Need a hint?

Use json.loads() to convert strings to objects, append widgets, then json.dumps() to convert back to string.