Get the Most Out of Your AWS Health Dashboard: Be Informed, Stay Safe!

View the overall health of your Amazon Web Services services.

Are you working relentlessly to ensure the uptime and security of AWS services? The AWS Health Dashboard can assist you with its comprehensive cloud environment health dashboard. In this blog, we'll go over the fundamentals of the AWS Health Dashboard, including code snippets, scenarios, and best practices.

What exactly is the AWS Health Dashboard?

First, let's define the AWS Health Dashboard so we can start writing code. This service allows you to see the status of your AWS accounts, resources, and services in real time. It notifies you of operational problems, performance drops, and security risks so you can react quickly.

Situations in which the AWS Health Dashboard shines

Case 1: Unexpected Service Failures

Assume it's a typical workday when end-users begin reporting problems. Your AWS-based application is inaccessible. However, if you have the AWS Health Dashboard appropriately configured, you will receive an alert informing you of any service failures. This proactive alert allows you to reach out to your users proactively and begin working on contingency measures.

Case 2: Scheduled Maintenance

Periodic maintenance is inevitable for AWS and other cloud services. With the Health Dashboard, you can anticipate when your system may be offline and take precautions to protect your clients from any unanticipated disruptions.

Getting to the AWS Health Dashboard

Gaining access to the Health Dashboard is straightforward. Navigate to the AWS Health section of your AWS Management Console. What if programmatic access is required? The AWS Health API comes into play here.

Integration of Boto3 with the AWS Health API

Python has an SDK for AWS called Boto3. This simple code sample should help you learn how to provide a list of events that could impact your account.

import boto3

# Initialize a session using Amazon QuickSight
session = boto3.session.Session(region_name='YOUR REGION')
# Create a client for the AWS Health API
health = session.client('health')
# Call the API to fetch events
events = health.describe_events(filter={
    'eventStatusCodes': [
        'open',  # You can also specify 'closed' or 'upcoming'
    ]
})
print(events)

This snippet would list service disruptions and other incidents.

Notify CloudWatch of a Health Dashboard Event

import boto3

# Initialize a session
session = boto3.Session()# Create CloudWatch client
cloudwatch = session.client('cloudwatch')# Create an alarm 
cloudwatch.put_metric_alarm(
    AlarmName='AWSHealthAlarm',
    AlarmDescription='Alarm for AWS Health Dashboard events',
    Namespace='AWS/Health',
    MetricName='HealthEvent',
    Statistic='NumberOfEvents',
    Period=300,
    EvaluationPeriods=1,
    Threshold=1,
    ComparisonOperator='GreaterThanOrEqualToThreshold',
    ActionsEnabled=True,
    AlarmActions=[
        'arn:aws:sns:us-east-1:12345678901:TOPIC-NAME'  # Replace with your SNS topic ARN
    ],
)

This code configures a CloudWatch alarm to send a notification to an SNS topic when at least one open health event occurs.

Case 3: Security Advisories

AWS has identified a security issue that has the potential to affect your EC2 instances.

We can use the AWS Health Dashboard to receive an alert about the vulnerability. It also includes the affected instances.

import boto3

# Initialize Boto3 Health Client
health_client = boto3.client('health')# Describe events with eventTypeCategory 'issue'
response = health_client.describe_events(
    filter={
        'eventTypeCategories': ['issue'],
        'eventStatusCodes': ['open'],
        'services': ['EC2']
    }
)# Print out the security events
for event in response['events']:
    if 'security' in event['eventTypeCode'].lower():
        print(f"Security issue found: {event['eventTypeCode']}")

Case 5: Improvement in Resource Efficiency

We can use this to identify instance utilisation. Let’s see how we can use this to observe the RDS instance when it experiences high latency.

import boto3

 # Initialize Boto3 CloudWatch Client
cloudwatch = boto3.client('cloudwatch')# Set CloudWatch alarm for RDS
cloudwatch.put_metric_alarm(
    AlarmName='RDSAlarm',
    MetricName='ReadLatency',
    Namespace='AWS/RDS',
    Statistic='Average',
    Period=300,
    EvaluationPeriods=3,
    Threshold=0.5,  # Specify your threshold for latency
    ComparisonOperator='GreaterThanThreshold',
    AlarmActions=[
        'arn:aws:sns:us-east-1:12345678901:TOPIC-NAME'
    ],
    Dimensions=[
        {
            'Name': 'DBInstanceIdentifier',
            'Value': 'your-db-instance'
        },
    ]
)cloudwatch.put_metric_alarm(
    AlarmName='RDSAlarm',
    MetricName='WriteLatency',
    Namespace='AWS/RDS',
    Statistic='Average',
    Period=300,
    EvaluationPeriods=3,
    Threshold=0.5,  # Specify your threshold for latency
    ComparisonOperator='GreaterThanThreshold',
    AlarmActions=[
        'arn:aws:sns:us-east-1:12345678901:TOPIC-NAME'
    ],
    Dimensions=[
        {
            'Name': 'DBInstanceIdentifier',
            'Value': 'your-db-instance'
        },
    ]
)

Case 6: Billing and Cost Management

We can remain within our budget by closely monitoring any unexpected increases in costs.

While the AWS Health Dashboard does not include billing information directly, you can watch for irregularities and receive alerts about unexpected expenditures by combining AWS Budgets with AWS Health.

import boto3

# Initialize Boto3 Budgets Client
budgets = boto3.client('budgets')# Create an alert for Cost Control
budgets.create_budget(
    AccountId='your-account-id',
    Budget={
        'BudgetName': 'MonthlyCostMonitor',
        'BudgetLimit': {
            'Amount': '1000',  # Your budget limit
            'Unit': 'USD'
        },
        'TimeUnit': 'MONTHLY',
        'CostFilters': {
            'Service': ['Amazon EC2', 'Amazon RDS']  # Filter by service
        }
    },
    NotificationsWithSubscribers=[
        {
            'Notification': {
                'NotificationType': 'ACTUAL',
                'ComparisonOperator': 'GREATER_THAN',
                'Threshold': 110,  # Notify when costs exceed the budget by 10%
            },
            'Subscribers': [
                {
                    'SubscriptionType': 'SNS',
                    'Address': 'arn:aws:sns:us-east-1:12345678901:TOPIC-NAME'
                }
            ]
        }
    ]
)

Conclusion

The AWS Health Dashboard and related services enable users to avoid problems and maintain a smooth AWS environment.

The AWS Health Dashboard is here to help you keep your cloud environment strong and healthy as you upgrade your AWS infrastructure.

Enjoy controlling your cloud!!