Key Metrics for Effective ECS Monitoring
Tags: ecs, fargate, ec2, aws
Published: 2023-05-23 22:37:25

## What is Amazon Elastic Cloud Service (AWS ECS)?

ECS is a managed container orchestration service provided by Amazon Web Services (AWS). It allows developers to easily run and scale containerized applications in the cloud, while ECS manages the underlying infrastructure. 

In this article, we will explore ECS monitoring and discuss the key metrics to monitor.

## Monitoring Amazon ECS

There are several ways to monitor Amazon ECS. One of the primary tools is Amazon CloudWatch, a monitoring service provided by AWS. CloudWatch provides metrics and logs for ECS, including CPU and memory usage, the number of tasks and services running, and the deployment status of containers.

Setting up CloudWatch alarms is crucial to automatically trigger actions in response to metric changes. Alarms can help maintain the smooth operation of the ECS cluster and ensure prompt resolution of any potential issues. Additionally, the ECS Management Console provides a web-based user interface for monitoring and managing ECS clusters and tasks. It allows developers to view the status of the cluster and tasks, as well as details such as CPU and memory usage.

## Monitoring ECS on EC2

When running ECS on Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2), it is essential to monitor key metrics to ensure smooth and efficient container operation. Some of the important metrics to monitor include CPU and memory usage of EC2 instances and individual containers, task and container counts, cluster and service health, and network performance.

CPU and memory usage monitoring helps identify performance bottlenecks and determine if scaling up EC2 instances or adjusting resource allocation for containers is necessary. Monitoring the number of tasks and containers ensures that all tasks run as expected and capacity is not exceeded. Monitoring cluster and service health provides an overview of task availability and reports any errors or issues. Network performance monitoring helps ensure adequate network resources for container communication.

## Monitoring ECS on Fargate

Monitoring ECS on Fargate, AWS's serverless compute engine for containers, requires specific tools designed for container monitoring. Traditional server monitoring tools are not applicable as Fargate abstracts the underlying EC2 instances. Amazon CloudWatch Container Insights is one such tool that provides detailed metrics and logs for Fargate tasks and services.

CloudWatch Container Insights allows real-time monitoring of Fargate environment performance, including CPU and memory usage, network performance, and running task/container counts. It enables setting alarms and reacting to environment changes using CloudWatch.

## Key Metrics to Monitor in AWS ECS

To effectively monitor ECS clusters, the following metrics should be considered:

1. **CPUReservation:** Represents the amount of CPU capacity reserved for a task or service, ensuring sufficient resources and avoiding contention.
2. **CPUUtilization:** Indicates the percentage of CPU capacity used by a task or service, aiding identification of overloading or resource optimization opportunities.
3. **MemoryUtilization:** Shows the percentage of memory used by a task or service, helping identify excessive memory usage and potential shortages.
4. **Storage metrics:** These include disk usage, read/write operations, latency, and throughput, essential for detecting storage-related issues.
5. **I/O metrics:** Monitor disk read/write operations and network bytes sent/received to troubleshoot performance problems related to input/output operations.
6. **Network metrics:** Monitor packets sent/received, network errors, and retransmits to identify and troubleshoot network-related issues.

**AWS ECS Monitoring with Lumigo**

For all the benefits that AWS ECS brings to developing and running containers, these distributed applications still need observability to ensure they run at the highest performance, with the greatest reliability to deliver seamless customer experiences. 

[Lumigo](lumigo.io) is a cloud native observability platform purpose-built for microservice applications that provides deep visibility into applications and infrastructure, enabling users to easily monitor and troubleshoot their applications running on Amazon ECS. 

- Trace end-to-end applications running on Amazon ECS, AWS Lambda and consuming AWS services and 3rd party APIs 
- Easily monitor and debug ECS clusters and underlying services and tasks in real-time 
- Setup automatic alerts to notify you in Slack, Pagerduty and other workflow tools 

[Learn more about monitoring ECS in the full article on Lumigo.io](https://lumigo.io/aws-ecs-understanding-launch-types-service-options-and-pricing/ecs-monitoring/)