PutMetricAlarm
Creates or updates an alarm and associates it with the specified metric. Optionally, this operation can associate one or more Amazon SNS resources with the alarm.
When this operation creates an alarm, the alarm state is immediately set to
INSUFFICIENT_DATA. The alarm is evaluated and its state is set
appropriately. Any actions associated with the state are then executed.
When you update an existing alarm, its state is left unchanged, but the update completely overwrites the previous configuration of the alarm.
If you are an AWS Identity and Access Management (IAM) user, you must have Amazon EC2 permissions for some operations:
ec2:DescribeInstanceStatusandec2:DescribeInstancesfor all alarms on EC2 instance status metricsec2:StopInstancesfor alarms with stop actionsec2:TerminateInstancesfor alarms with terminate actionsec2:DescribeInstanceRecoveryAttributeandec2:RecoverInstancesfor alarms with recover actions
If you have read/write permissions for Amazon CloudWatch but not for Amazon EC2, you can still create an alarm, but the stop or terminate actions won't be performed. However, if you are later granted the required permissions, the alarm actions that you created earlier will be performed.
If you are using an IAM role (for example, an Amazon EC2 instance profile), you cannot stop or terminate the instance using alarm actions. However, you can still see the alarm state and perform any other actions such as Amazon SNS notifications or Auto Scaling policies.
If you are using temporary security credentials granted using the AWS Security Token Service (AWS STS), you cannot stop or terminate an Amazon EC2 instance using alarm actions.
Note that you must create at least one stop, terminate, or reboot alarm using the Amazon EC2 or CloudWatch console to create the EC2ActionsAccess IAM role. After this IAM role is created, you can create stop, terminate, or reboot alarms using a command-line interface or an API.
Request Parameters
For information about the parameters that are common to all actions, see Common Parameters.
- ActionsEnabled
Indicates whether actions should be executed during any changes to the alarm state.
Type: Boolean
Required: No
- AlarmActions.member.N
The actions to execute when this alarm transitions to the
ALARMstate from any other state. Each action is specified as an Amazon Resource Name (ARN).Valid Values: arn:aws:automate:region:ec2:stop | arn:aws:automate:region:ec2:terminate | arn:aws:automate:region:ec2:recover
Valid Values (for use with IAM roles): arn:aws:swf:us-east-1:{customer-account}:action/actions/AWS_EC2.InstanceId.Stop/1.0 | arn:aws:swf:us-east-1:{customer-account}:action/actions/AWS_EC2.InstanceId.Terminate/1.0 | arn:aws:swf:us-east-1:{customer-account}:action/actions/AWS_EC2.InstanceId.Reboot/1.0
Type: array of Strings
Array Members: Maximum number of 5 items.
Length Constraints: Minimum length of 1. Maximum length of 1024.
Required: No
- AlarmDescription
The description for the alarm.
Type: String
Length Constraints: Minimum length of 0. Maximum length of 1024.
Required: No
- AlarmName
The name for the alarm. This name must be unique within the AWS account.
Type: String
Length Constraints: Minimum length of 1. Maximum length of 255.
Required: Yes
- ComparisonOperator
The arithmetic operation to use when comparing the specified statistic and threshold. The specified statistic value is used as the first operand.
Type: String
Valid Values:
GreaterThanOrEqualToThreshold | GreaterThanThreshold | LessThanThreshold | LessThanOrEqualToThresholdRequired: Yes
- Dimensions.member.N
The dimensions for the metric associated with the alarm.
Type: array of Dimension objects
Array Members: Maximum number of 10 items.
Required: No
- EvaluationPeriods
The number of periods over which data is compared to the specified threshold.
Type: Integer
Valid Range: Minimum value of 1.
Required: Yes
- ExtendedStatistic
The percentile statistic for the metric associated with the alarm. Specify a value between p0.0 and p100.
Type: String
Pattern:
p(\d{1,2}(\.\d{0,2})?|100)Required: No
- InsufficientDataActions.member.N
The actions to execute when this alarm transitions to the
INSUFFICIENT_DATAstate from any other state. Each action is specified as an Amazon Resource Name (ARN).Valid Values: arn:aws:automate:region:ec2:stop | arn:aws:automate:region:ec2:terminate | arn:aws:automate:region:ec2:recover
Valid Values (for use with IAM roles): arn:aws:swf:us-east-1:{customer-account}:action/actions/AWS_EC2.InstanceId.Stop/1.0 | arn:aws:swf:us-east-1:{customer-account}:action/actions/AWS_EC2.InstanceId.Terminate/1.0 | arn:aws:swf:us-east-1:{customer-account}:action/actions/AWS_EC2.InstanceId.Reboot/1.0
Type: array of Strings
Array Members: Maximum number of 5 items.
Length Constraints: Minimum length of 1. Maximum length of 1024.
Required: No
- MetricName
The name for the metric associated with the alarm.
Type: String
Length Constraints: Minimum length of 1. Maximum length of 255.
Required: Yes
- Namespace
The namespace for the metric associated with the alarm.
Type: String
Length Constraints: Minimum length of 1. Maximum length of 255.
Pattern:
[^:].*Required: Yes
- OKActions.member.N
The actions to execute when this alarm transitions to an
OKstate from any other state. Each action is specified as an Amazon Resource Name (ARN).Valid Values: arn:aws:automate:region:ec2:stop | arn:aws:automate:region:ec2:terminate | arn:aws:automate:region:ec2:recover
Valid Values (for use with IAM roles): arn:aws:swf:us-east-1:{customer-account}:action/actions/AWS_EC2.InstanceId.Stop/1.0 | arn:aws:swf:us-east-1:{customer-account}:action/actions/AWS_EC2.InstanceId.Terminate/1.0 | arn:aws:swf:us-east-1:{customer-account}:action/actions/AWS_EC2.InstanceId.Reboot/1.0
Type: array of Strings
Array Members: Maximum number of 5 items.
Length Constraints: Minimum length of 1. Maximum length of 1024.
Required: No
- Period
The period, in seconds, over which the specified statistic is applied.
Type: Integer
Valid Range: Minimum value of 60.
Required: Yes
- Statistic
The statistic for the metric associated with the alarm, other than percentile. For percentile statistics, use
ExtendedStatistic.Type: String
Valid Values:
SampleCount | Average | Sum | Minimum | MaximumRequired: No
- Threshold
The value against which the specified statistic is compared.
Type: Double
Required: Yes
- Unit
The unit of measure for the statistic. For example, the units for the Amazon EC2 NetworkIn metric are Bytes because NetworkIn tracks the number of bytes that an instance receives on all network interfaces. You can also specify a unit when you create a custom metric. Units help provide conceptual meaning to your data. Metric data points that specify a unit of measure, such as Percent, are aggregated separately.
If you specify a unit, you must use a unit that is appropriate for the metric. Otherwise, the Amazon CloudWatch alarm can get stuck in the
INSUFFICIENT DATAstate.Type: String
Valid Values:
Seconds | Microseconds | Milliseconds | Bytes | Kilobytes | Megabytes | Gigabytes | Terabytes | Bits | Kilobits | Megabits | Gigabits | Terabits | Percent | Count | Bytes/Second | Kilobytes/Second | Megabytes/Second | Gigabytes/Second | Terabytes/Second | Bits/Second | Kilobits/Second | Megabits/Second | Gigabits/Second | Terabits/Second | Count/Second | NoneRequired: No
Errors
For information about the errors that are common to all actions, see Common Errors.
See Also
For more information about using this API in one of the language-specific AWS SDKs, see the following:
