Cloud Infrastructure Monitoring

Amazon EC2
Monitoring

CPU Credits, Memory Usage & Auto-Scaling Visibility

Never let a burstable EC2 instance run out of CPU credits again. BigBell monitors EC2 compute performance, memory utilization, and EBS storage limits to keep your AWS workloads blazing fast.

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Overview

What is EC2 Monitoring?

EC2 (Elastic Compute Cloud) monitoring is the specific tracking of virtual machines running on AWS. While it includes standard OS metrics (like CPU and Memory), true EC2 monitoring also tracks AWS-specific metrics such as CPU Credit Balances (for T-series instances), Status Check Failures (hardware degradation), and EBS (Elastic Block Store) Read/Write throughput limits.

Why EC2 Monitoring Matters

EC2 instances operate under strict AWS hardware limits. A T3 instance will perform beautifully until it exhausts its CPU Credit Balance, at which point its CPU is aggressively throttled, causing your application to grind to a halt. Similarly, EC2 instances have maximum network and EBS bandwidth limits. Monitoring EC2 ensures you don't hit these invisible cloud provider limits, and helps you identify when you need to change instance types (e.g., from a t3.medium to a c5.large).

✓Prevent severe application throttling by tracking CPU Credits
✓Identify AWS hardware failures via Status Check alerts
✓Monitor actual Memory usage (which CloudWatch misses by default)
✓Optimize EC2 instance sizing to reduce AWS costs

Core Use Cases

Critical for maintaining web server fleets in Auto-Scaling Groups, ensuring burstable (T2/T3/T4g) instances have enough credits for daily traffic spikes, and debugging network throughput bottlenecks on heavy data-processing instances.

Features

Complete EC2 Monitoring Capabilities

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CPU Credit Tracking

Continuously monitor CPU Credit Balances and CPU Surplus Credits to prevent unexpected throttling on burstable instances.

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Deep Memory Metrics

Unlike basic CloudWatch, BigBell tracks true OS-level memory and swap usage by deploying a lightweight EC2 agent.

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EBS Bandwidth

Monitor the throughput between your EC2 instance and its attached EBS volumes to ensure you aren't hitting instance-level IO limits.

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Status Check Alerts

Get instantly notified if AWS detects an underlying hardware or hypervisor failure (System Status Check) affecting your instance.

FAQ

Frequently Asked Questions

AWS CloudWatch only sees the hypervisor level, so it cannot see inside the OS to track RAM. BigBell solves this by collecting OS-level memory metrics directly.

The hypervisor artificially limits the CPU's clock cycles to a baseline (e.g., 20%). Your server will remain online but will respond incredibly slowly. BigBell alerts you *before* credits run out.

Yes! As your AWS Auto-Scaling Group spins up new EC2 instances, BigBell automatically discovers them, monitors them, and removes them when they are terminated.

Master Your EC2 Metrics Today

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