CloudWatch metrics for DynamoDB - Mini Project: Build & Apply

Monitor DynamoDB Table with CloudWatch Metrics

📖 Scenario: You manage a DynamoDB table that stores customer orders. You want to monitor its performance and usage by tracking key CloudWatch metrics.

🎯 Goal: Build a CloudWatch monitoring setup for a DynamoDB table to track ConsumedReadCapacityUnits and ConsumedWriteCapacityUnits metrics.

📋 What You'll Learn

Create a DynamoDB table named Orders with a primary key OrderId.

Define a CloudWatch metric alarm for ConsumedReadCapacityUnits.

Define a CloudWatch metric alarm for ConsumedWriteCapacityUnits.

Set up an alarm to notify when read capacity units exceed a threshold.

💡 Why This Matters

🌍 Real World

Monitoring DynamoDB tables helps maintain application performance and avoid throttling by alerting you when capacity limits are approached.

💼 Career

Cloud engineers and database administrators use CloudWatch metrics and alarms to ensure database reliability and optimize resource usage.

1

Create DynamoDB Table

Create a DynamoDB table named Orders with a primary key called OrderId of type String.

DynamoDB

# Your code here to create the DynamoDB table 'Orders' with primary key 'OrderId' of type String

Need a hint?

Use the AWS CLI aws dynamodb create-table command with the specified parameters.

2

Create CloudWatch Alarm for Read Capacity

Create a CloudWatch metric alarm named ReadCapacityFilter to monitor the ConsumedReadCapacityUnits metric for the Orders table.

DynamoDB

aws dynamodb create-table \
    --table-name Orders \
    --attribute-definitions AttributeName=OrderId,AttributeType=S \
    --key-schema AttributeName=OrderId,KeyType=HASH \
    --provisioned-throughput ReadCapacityUnits=5,WriteCapacityUnits=5
# Your code here to create CloudWatch metric alarm 'ReadCapacityFilter' for 'ConsumedReadCapacityUnits'

Need a hint?

Use aws cloudwatch put-metric-alarm to create the metric alarm for read capacity units.

3

Create CloudWatch Alarm for Write Capacity

Create a CloudWatch metric alarm named WriteCapacityFilter to monitor the ConsumedWriteCapacityUnits metric for the Orders table.

DynamoDB

aws dynamodb create-table \
    --table-name Orders \
    --attribute-definitions AttributeName=OrderId,AttributeType=S \
    --key-schema AttributeName=OrderId,KeyType=HASH \
    --provisioned-throughput ReadCapacityUnits=5,WriteCapacityUnits=5

aws cloudwatch put-metric-alarm \
    --alarm-name ReadCapacityFilter \
    --metric-name ConsumedReadCapacityUnits \
    --namespace AWS/DynamoDB \
    --statistic Sum \
    --period 300 \
    --threshold 50 \
    --comparison-operator GreaterThanThreshold \
    --dimensions Name=TableName,Value=Orders \
    --evaluation-periods 1 \
    --alarm-actions arn:aws:sns:us-east-1:123456789012:NotifyMe
# Your code here to create CloudWatch metric alarm 'WriteCapacityFilter' for 'ConsumedWriteCapacityUnits'

Need a hint?

Use aws cloudwatch put-metric-alarm to create the metric alarm for write capacity units.

4

Set Alarm Threshold for Read Capacity

Update the ReadCapacityFilter alarm to trigger when the sum of ConsumedReadCapacityUnits exceeds 100 within a 5-minute period.

DynamoDB

aws dynamodb create-table \
    --table-name Orders \
    --attribute-definitions AttributeName=OrderId,AttributeType=S \
    --key-schema AttributeName=OrderId,KeyType=HASH \
    --provisioned-throughput ReadCapacityUnits=5,WriteCapacityUnits=5

aws cloudwatch put-metric-alarm \
    --alarm-name ReadCapacityFilter \
    --metric-name ConsumedReadCapacityUnits \
    --namespace AWS/DynamoDB \
    --statistic Sum \
    --period 300 \
    --threshold 50 \
    --comparison-operator GreaterThanThreshold \
    --dimensions Name=TableName,Value=Orders \
    --evaluation-periods 1 \
    --alarm-actions arn:aws:sns:us-east-1:123456789012:NotifyMe

aws cloudwatch put-metric-alarm \
    --alarm-name WriteCapacityFilter \
    --metric-name ConsumedWriteCapacityUnits \
    --namespace AWS/DynamoDB \
    --statistic Sum \
    --period 300 \
    --threshold 50 \
    --comparison-operator GreaterThanThreshold \
    --dimensions Name=TableName,Value=Orders \
    --evaluation-periods 1 \
    --alarm-actions arn:aws:sns:us-east-1:123456789012:NotifyMe
# Your code here to update 'ReadCapacityFilter' alarm threshold to 100

Need a hint?

Use aws cloudwatch put-metric-alarm with the updated threshold value.