AWS polling

To poll resources and gather metrics, multiple AWS APIs — including CloudWatch, EC2, and EBS — make requests (also known as "calls") to cloud instances and volumes.

AWS provides 1 million free requests per calendar month for each account. If you exceed that limit, your AWS account will be charged for extra requests within the remaining time frame.

The amount of polling requests that occur depends on many factors, including:

• Polling frequency.
• The quantity of resources being polled.
• The types of resources being polled.

For example, monitoring a single AWS EC2 instance with a 5-minute polling interval consumes approximately 60,000 requests per calendar month; an EBS volume with the same polling interval may use 100,000 requests per month. Instances managed as nodes, third-party products, and custom code also consume requests.

How SolarWinds Platform works with AWS to poll for metrics

1. Multiple AWS APIs (including CloudWatch, EC2, and EBS) poll AWS cloud instances and volumes.
2. The EC2 web service sends metric data to the Amazon CloudWatch monitoring service.
3. The SolarWinds Platform polls the Amazon CloudWatch service for standard AWS metrics, plus metrics such as memory, usage, and alerts.
4. The SolarWinds Platform saves metric data to the SolarWinds Platform database.

Track how many API requests you use

You have the following options to track the number of used API requests:

• Display the latest amount of consumed requests in the AWS Management Console.
• Display approximate usage in the SolarWinds Platform Web Console.

Display approximate usage in the SolarWinds Platform Web Console

1. On the Cloud Summary page, click Cloud Infrastructure Monitoring.
2. On the Cloud Infrastructure Monitoring page, click Manage Cloud Accounts.
3. On the Manage Cloud Accounts and select the check box for an AWS account.
4. Click Edit Properties.
5. On the Edit Properties page, switch to the API Polling Options tab and examine the Approximate Requests Used this Month value.

Manage AWS polling

• Edit cloud account properties to select instances to monitor, toggle monitoring on and off, and adjust polling intervals.
• Use the AWS Simple Monthly Calculator to estimate costs.
• Disable CloudWatch polling at the account level.
• Configure polling alerts for throttling, exceeded limits, health status, and more.
• Consider toggling Auto Monitoring off when adding accounts to the SolarWinds Platform to prevent overages.
• To avoid exceeding polling limits, consider toggling Auto Monitoring off when adding a cloud account to block polling for new instances discovered launched and then discovered for an account. You can enable monitoring for individual instances later.
• Request a limit increase from AWS.