The following table describes important changes in each release of the Amazon CloudWatch User Guide, beginning in June 2018. For notification about updates to this documentation, you can subscribe to an RSS feed.
| Change | Description | Date |
|---|---|---|
| CloudWatch Synthetics releases new runtime version | CloudWatch Synthetics has released a new runtime version. For more information, see Canary Runtime Versions in the Amazon CloudWatch User Guide. | September 11, 2020 |
| AWS CloudFormation support for Postgre SQL on Amazon RDS or Amazon EC2. | You can monitor applications built with PostgreSQL running on Amazon RDS or Amazon EC2. | September 11, 2020 |
| CloudWatch supports dashboard sharing | You can now share CloudWatch dashboards with people outside of your organization and AWS account. For more information, see Sharing CloudWatch Dashboards in the Amazon CloudWatch User Guide. | September 10, 2020 |
| Set up monitors for .NET applications using SQL Server on the backend with CloudWatch Application Insights | You can use the documentation tutorial to help you to set up monitors for .NET applications using SQL Server on the backend with CloudWatch Application Insights. | August 19, 2020 |
| AWS CloudFormation support for Amazon CloudWatch Application Insights applications. | You can add CloudWatch Application Insights monitoring, including key metrics and telemetry, to your application, database, and web server, directly from AWS CloudFormation templates. | July 30, 2020 |
| Amazon CloudWatch Application Insights monitoring for Aurora for MySQL database clusters. | You can monitor Aurora for MySQL database clusters (RDS Aurora) with Amazon CloudWatch Application Insights. | July 2, 2020 |
| CloudWatch Contributor Insights general availability | CloudWatch Contributor Insights is now generally available. It enables you to analyze log data and create time series that display contributor data. You can see metrics about the top-N contributors, the total number of unique contributors, and their usage. For more information, see Using Contributor Insights to Analyze High-Cardinality Data in the Amazon CloudWatch User Guide. | April 2, 2020 |
| CloudWatch Synthetics public preview | CloudWatch Synthetics is now in public preview. It enables you to create canaries to monitor your endpoints and APIs. For more information, see Using Canaries in the Amazon CloudWatch User Guide. | November 25, 2019 |
| CloudWatch Contributor Insights public preview | CloudWatch Contributor Insights is now in public preview. It enables you to analyze log data and create time series that display contributor data. You can see metrics about the top-N contributors, the total number of unique contributors, and their usage. For more information, see Using Contributor Insights to Analyze High-Cardinality Data in the Amazon CloudWatch User Guide. | November 25, 2019 |
| CloudWatch launches ServiceLens feature | ServiceLens ehances the observability of your services and applications by enabling you to integrate traces, metrics, logs, and alarms into one place. ServiceLens integrates CloudWatch with AWS X-Ray to provide an end-to-end view of your application. For more information, see Using ServiceLens to Monitor the Health of Your Applications in the Amazon CloudWatch User Guide. | November 21, 2019 |
| Use CloudWatch to proactively manage your AWS service quotas | You can use CloudWatch to proactively manage your AWS service quotas. CloudWatch usage metrics provide visibility into your account's usage of resources and API operations. For more information, see Service Quotas Integration and Usage Metrics in the Amazon CloudWatch User Guide. | November 19, 2019 |
| CloudWatch sends events when alarms change state | CloudWatch now sends an event to Amazon EventBridge when any CloudWatch alarm changes state. For more information, see Alarm Events and EventBridge in the Amazon CloudWatch User Guide. | October 8, 2019 |
| Container Insights | CloudWatch Container Insights is now generally available. It enables you to collect, aggregate, and summarize metrics and logs from your containerized applications and microservices. For more information, see Using Container Insights in the Amazon CloudWatch User Guide. | August 30, 2019 |
| Updates for Container Insights preview metrics on Amazon EKS and Kubernetes | The Container Insights on Amazon EKS and Kubernetes public preview has been updated. InstanceId is now included as a dimension to the cluster EC2 instances. This allows alarms that have been created on these metrics to trigger the following EC2 actions: Stop, Terminate, Reboot, or Recover. Additionally, pod and service metrics are now reported by Kubernetes namespace to simplify the monitoring and alarming on metrics by namespace. | August 19, 2019 |
| Updates for AWS Systems Manager OpsCenter integration | Updates on how CloudWatch Application Insights integrates with Systems Manager OpsCenter. | August 7, 2019 |
| CloudWatch usage metrics | CloudWatch usage metrics help you track the usage of your CloudWatch resources and stay within your service limits. For more information, see https://docs.aws.amazon.com/AmazonCloudWatch/latest/monitoring/CloudWatch-Usage-Metrics.html. | August 6, 2019 |
| CloudWatch Container Insights public preview | CloudWatch Container Insights is now in public preview. It enables you to collect, aggregate, and summarize metrics and logs from your containerized applications and microservices. For more information, see Using Container Insights in the Amazon CloudWatch User Guide. | July 9, 2019 |
| CloudWatch Anomaly Detection public preview | CloudWatch anomaly detection is now in public preview. CloudWatch applies machine-learning algorithms to a metric's past data to create a model of the metric's expected values. You can use this model for visualization and for setting alarms. For more information, see Using CloudWatch Anomaly Detection in the Amazon CloudWatch User Guide. | July 9, 2019 |
| CloudWatch Application Insights for .NET and SQL Server | CloudWatch Application Insights for .NET and SQL Server facilitates observability for .NET and SQL Server applications. It can help you set up the best monitors for your application resources to continuously analyze data for signs of problems with your applications. | June 21, 2019 |
| CloudWatch agent section re-organized | The CloudWatch agent documentation has been rewritten to improve clarity, especially for customers using the command line to install and configure the agent. For more information, see Collecting Metrics and Logs from Amazon EC2 Instances and On-Premises Servers with the CloudWatch Agent in the Amazon CloudWatch User Guide. | March 28, 2019 |
| SEARCH function added to metric math expressions | You can now use a SEARCH function in metric math expressions. This enables you to create dashboards that update automatically as new resources are created that match the search query. For more information, see Using Search Expressions in Graphs in the Amazon CloudWatch User Guide. | March 21, 2019 |
| AWS SDK Metrics for Enterprise Support | SDK Metrics helps you assess the health of your AWS services and diagnose latency caused by reaching your account usage limits or by a service outage. For more information, see Monitor Applications Using AWS SDK Metrics in the Amazon CloudWatch User Guide. | December 11, 2018 |
| Alarms on math expressions | CloudWatch supports creating alarms based on metric math expressions. For more information, see Alarms on Math Expressions in the Amazon CloudWatch User Guide. | November 20, 2018 |
| New CloudWatch console home page | Amazon has created a new home page in the CloudWatch console, which automatically displays key metrics and alarms for all the AWS services you are using. For more information, see Getting Started with Amazon CloudWatch in the Amazon CloudWatch User Guide. | November 19, 2018 |
| AWS CloudFormation templates for the CloudWatch Agent | Amazon has uploaded AWS CloudFormation templates that you can use to install and update the CloudWatch agent. For more information, see Install the CloudWatch Agent on New Instances Using AWS CloudFormation in the Amazon CloudWatch User Guide. | November 9, 2018 |
| Enhancements to the CloudWatch Agent | The CloudWatch agent has been updated to work with both the StatsD and collectd protocols. It also has improved cross-account support. For more information, see Retrieve Custom Metrics with StatsD, Retrieve Custom Metrics with collectd, and Sending Metrics and Logs to a Different AWS Account in the Amazon CloudWatch User Guide. | September 28, 2018 |
| Support for Amazon VPC endpoints | You can now establish a private connection between your VPC and CloudWatch. For more information, see Using CloudWatch with Interface VPC Endpoints in the Amazon CloudWatch User Guide. | June 28, 2018 |
The following table describes important changes to the Amazon CloudWatch User Guide before June 2018.
| Change | Description | Release Date |
|---|---|---|
| Metric math | You can now perform math expressions on CloudWatch metrics, producing new time series that you can add to graphs on your dashboard. For more information, see Using Metric Math. | April 4, 2018 |
| "M out of N" alarms | You can now configure an alarm to trigger based on "M out of N" datapoints in any alarm evaluation interval. For more information, see Evaluating an Alarm. | December 8, 2017 |
| CloudWatch agent | A new unified CloudWatch agent was released. You can use the unified multi-platform agent to collect custom both system metrics and log files from Amazon EC2 instances and on-premises servers. The new agent supports both Windows and Linux and enables customization of metrics collected, including sub-resource metrics such as per-CPU core. For more information, see Collecting Metrics and Logs from Amazon EC2 Instances and On-Premises Servers with the CloudWatch Agent. | September 7, 2017 |
| NAT gateway metrics | Added metrics for Amazon VPC NAT gateway. | September 7, 2017 |
| High-resolution metrics | You can now optionally set up custom metrics as high-resolution metrics, with a granularity of as low as one second. For more information, see High-Resolution Metrics. | July 26, 2017 |
| Dashboard APIs | You can now create, modify, and delete dashboards using APIs and the AWS CLI. For more information, see Creating a CloudWatch Dashboard. | July 6, 2017 |
| AWS Direct Connect metrics | Added metrics for AWS Direct Connect. | June 29, 2017 |
| Amazon VPC VPN metrics | Added metrics for Amazon VPC VPN. | May 15, 2017 |
| AppStream 2.0 metrics | Added metrics for AppStream 2.0. | March 8, 2017 |
| CloudWatch console color picker | You can now choose the color for each metric on your dashboard widgets. For more information, see Edit a Graph on a CloudWatch Dashboard. | February 27, 2017 |
| Alarms on dashboards | Alarms can now be added to dashboards. For more information, see Add an Alarm Widget to a CloudWatch Dashboard. | February 15, 2017 |
| Added metrics for Amazon Polly | Added metrics for Amazon Polly. | December 1, 2016 |
| Added metrics for Amazon Kinesis Data Analytics | Added metrics for Amazon Kinesis Data Analytics. | December 1, 2016 |
| Added support for percentile statistics | You can specify any percentile, using up to two decimal places (for example, p95.45). For more information, see Percentiles. | November 17, 2016 |
| Added metrics for Amazon Simple Email Service | Added metrics for Amazon Simple Email Service. | November 2, 2016 |
| Updated metrics retention | Amazon CloudWatch now retains metrics data for 15 months instead of 14 days. | November 1, 2016 |
| Updated metrics console interface | The CloudWatch console is updated with improvements to existing functionality and new functionality. | November 1, 2016 |
| Added metrics for Amazon Elastic Transcoder | Added metrics for Amazon Elastic Transcoder. | September 20, 2016 |
| Added metrics for Amazon API Gateway | Added metrics for Amazon API Gateway. | September 9, 2016 |
| Added metrics for AWS Key Management Service | Added metrics for AWS Key Management Service. | September 9, 2016 |
| Added metrics for the new Application Load Balancers supported by Elastic Load Balancing | Added metrics for Application Load Balancers. | August 11, 2016 |
| Added new NetworkPacketsIn and NetworkPacketsOut metrics for Amazon EC2 | Added new NetworkPacketsIn and NetworkPacketsOut metrics for Amazon EC2. | March 23, 2016 |
| Added new metrics for Amazon EC2 Spot fleet | Added new metrics for Amazon EC2 Spot fleet. | March 21, 2016 |
| Added new CloudWatch Logs metrics | Added new CloudWatch Logs metrics. | March 10, 2016 |
| Added Amazon Elasticsearch Service and AWS WAF metrics and dimensions | Added Amazon Elasticsearch Service and AWS WAF metrics and dimensions. | October 14, 2015 |
| Added support for CloudWatch dashboards | Dashboards are customizable home pages in the CloudWatch console that you can use to monitor your resources in a single view, even those that are spread out across different regions. For more information, see Using Amazon CloudWatch Dashboards. | October 8, 2015 |
| Added AWS Lambda metrics and dimensions | Added AWS Lambda metrics and dimensions. | September 4, 2015 |
| Added Amazon Elastic Container Service metrics and dimensions | Added Amazon Elastic Container Service metrics and dimensions. | August 17, 2015 |
| Added Amazon Simple Storage Service metrics and dimensions | Added Amazon Simple Storage Service metrics and dimensions. | July 26, 2015 |
| New feature: Reboot alarm action | Added the reboot alarm action and new IAM role for use with alarm actions. For more information, see Create Alarms to Stop, Terminate, Reboot, or Recover an Instance. | July 23, 2015 |
| Added Amazon WorkSpaces metrics and dimensions | Added Amazon WorkSpaces metrics and dimensions. | April 30, 2015 |
| Added Amazon Machine Learning metrics and dimensions | Added Amazon Machine Learning metrics and dimensions. | April 9, 2015 |
| New feature: Amazon EC2 instance recovery alarm actions | Updated alarm actions to include new EC2 instance recovery action. For more information, see Create Alarms to Stop, Terminate, Reboot, or Recover an Instance. | March 12, 2015 |
| Added Amazon CloudFront and Amazon CloudSearch metrics and dimensions | Added Amazon CloudFront and Amazon CloudSearch metrics and dimensions. | March 6, 2015 |
| Added Amazon Simple Workflow Service metrics and dimensions | Added Amazon Simple Workflow Service metrics and dimensions. | May 9, 2014 |
| Updated guide to add support for AWS CloudTrail | Added a new topic to explain how you can use AWS CloudTrail to log activity in Amazon CloudWatch. For more information, see Logging Amazon CloudWatch API Calls with AWS CloudTrail. | April 30, 2014 |
| Updated guide to use the new AWS Command Line Interface (AWS CLI) | The AWS CLI is a cross-service CLI with a simplified installation, unified configuration, and consistent command line syntax. The AWS CLI is supported on Linux/Unix, Windows, and Mac. The CLI examples in this guide have been updated to use the new AWS CLI. For information about how to install and configure the new AWS CLI, see Getting Set Up with the AWS Command Line Interface in the AWS Command Line Interface User Guide. | February 21, 2014 |
| Added Amazon Redshift and AWS OpsWorks metrics and dimensions | Added Amazon Redshift and AWS OpsWorks metrics and dimensions. | July 16, 2013 |
| Added Amazon Route 53 metrics and dimensions | Added Amazon Route 53 metrics and dimensions. | June 26, 2013 |
| New feature: Amazon CloudWatch Alarm Actions | Added a new section to document Amazon CloudWatch alarm actions, which you can use to stop or terminate an Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud instance. For more information, see Create Alarms to Stop, Terminate, Reboot, or Recover an Instance. | January 8, 2013 |
| Updated EBS metrics | Updated the EBS metrics to include two new metrics for Provisioned IOPS volumes. | November 20, 2012 |
| New billing alerts | You can now monitor your AWS charges using Amazon CloudWatch metrics and create alarms to notify you when you have exceeded the specified threshold. For more information, see Creating a Billing Alarm to Monitor Your Estimated AWS Charges. | May 10, 2012 |
| New metrics | You can now access six new Elastic Load Balancing metrics that provide counts of various HTTP response codes. | October 19, 2011 |
| New feature | You can now access metrics from Amazon EMR. | June 30, 2011 |
| New feature | You can now access metrics from Amazon Simple Notification Service and Amazon Simple Queue Service. | July 14, 2011 |
| New Feature | Added information about using the PutMetricData API to publish custom metrics. For more information, see Publishing Custom Metrics. |
May 10, 2011 |
| Updated metrics retention | Amazon CloudWatch now retains the history of an alarm for two weeks rather than six weeks. With this change, the retention period for alarms matches the retention period for metrics data. | April 7, 2011 |
| New feature | Added ability to send Amazon Simple Notification Service or Auto Scaling notifications when a metric has crossed a threshold. For more information, see Alarms. | December 2, 2010 |
| New feature | A number of CloudWatch actions now include the MaxRecords and NextToken parameters, which enable you to control pages of results to display. | December 2, 2010 |
| New feature | This service now integrates with AWS Identity and Access Management (IAM). | December 2, 2010 |