Important: This documentation is about an older version. It's relevant only to the release noted, many of the features and functions have been updated or replaced. Please view the current version.
Using template variables in CloudWatch queries
Instead of hard-coding server, application, and sensor names in your metric queries, you can use variables. The variables are listed as dropdown select boxes at the top of the dashboard. These dropdowns make it easy to change the display of data in your dashboard.
For an introduction to templating and template variables, refer to the Templating documentation.
Query variable
The CloudWatch data source provides the following queries that you can specify in the Query
field in the Variable edit view. They allow you to fill a variable’s options list with things like region
, namespaces
, metric names
and dimension keys/values
.
In place of region
you can specify default
to use the default region configured in the data source for the query,
e.g. metrics(AWS/DynamoDB, default)
or dimension_values(default, ..., ..., ...)
.
Read more about the available dimensions in the CloudWatch Metrics and Dimensions Reference.
Name | Description |
---|---|
regions() | Returns a list of all AWS regions |
namespaces() | Returns a list of namespaces CloudWatch support. |
metrics(namespace, [region]) | Returns a list of metrics in the namespace. (specify region or use “default” for custom metrics) |
dimension_keys(namespace) | Returns a list of dimension keys in the namespace. |
dimension_values(region, namespace, metric, dimension_key, [filters]) | Returns a list of dimension values matching the specified region , namespace , metric , dimension_key or you can use dimension filters to get more specific result as well. |
ebs_volume_ids(region, instance_id) | Returns a list of volume ids matching the specified region , instance_id . |
ec2_instance_attribute(region, attribute_name, filters) | Returns a list of attributes matching the specified region , attribute_name , filters . |
resource_arns(region, resource_type, tags) | Returns a list of ARNs matching the specified region , resource_type and tags . |
statistics() | Returns a list of all the standard statistics |
For details about the metrics CloudWatch provides, please refer to the CloudWatch documentation.
Example of templated queries
Here is an example of the dimension queries which will return list of resources for individual AWS Services:
Query | Service |
---|---|
dimension_values(us-east-1,AWS/ELB,RequestCount,LoadBalancerName) | ELB |
dimension_values(us-east-1,AWS/ElastiCache,CPUUtilization,CacheClusterId) | ElastiCache |
dimension_values(us-east-1,AWS/Redshift,CPUUtilization,ClusterIdentifier) | RedShift |
dimension_values(us-east-1,AWS/RDS,CPUUtilization,DBInstanceIdentifier) | RDS |
dimension_values(us-east-1,AWS/S3,BucketSizeBytes,BucketName) | S3 |
dimension_values(us-east-1,CWAgent,disk_used_percent,device,{"InstanceId":"$instance_id"}) | CloudWatch Agent |
resource_arns(eu-west-1,elasticloadbalancing:loadbalancer,{"elasticbeanstalk:environment-name":["myApp-dev","myApp-prod"]}) | ELB |
resource_arns(eu-west-1,elasticloadbalancing:loadbalancer,{"Component":["$service"],"Environment":["$environment"]}) | ELB |
resource_arns(eu-west-1,ec2:instance,{"elasticbeanstalk:environment-name":["myApp-dev","myApp-prod"]}) | EC2 |
Using JSON format template variables
Some queries accept filters in JSON format and Grafana supports the conversion of template variables to JSON.
If env = 'production', 'staging'
, following query will return ARNs of EC2 instances which Environment
tag is production
or staging
.
resource_arns(us-east-1, ec2:instance, {"Environment":${env:json}})
ec2_instance_attribute examples
JSON filters
The ec2_instance_attribute
query takes filters
in JSON format.
You can specify pre-defined filters of ec2:DescribeInstances.
Note that the actual filtering takes place on Amazon’s servers, not in Grafana.
Filters syntax:
{ "filter_name1": [ "filter_value1" ], "filter_name2": [ "filter_value2" ] }
Example ec2_instance_attribute()
query
ec2_instance_attribute(us - east - 1, InstanceId, { 'tag:Environment': ['production'] });
Selecting attributes
Only 1 attribute per instance can be returned. Any flat attribute can be selected (i.e. if the attribute has a single value and isn’t an object or array). Below is a list of available flat attributes:
AmiLaunchIndex
Architecture
ClientToken
EbsOptimized
EnaSupport
Hypervisor
IamInstanceProfile
ImageId
InstanceId
InstanceLifecycle
InstanceType
KernelId
KeyName
LaunchTime
Platform
PrivateDnsName
PrivateIpAddress
PublicDnsName
PublicIpAddress
RamdiskId
RootDeviceName
RootDeviceType
SourceDestCheck
SpotInstanceRequestId
SriovNetSupport
SubnetId
VirtualizationType
VpcId
Tags can be selected by prepending the tag name with Tags.
Example ec2_instance_attribute()
query
ec2_instance_attribute(us - east - 1, Tags.Name, { 'tag:Team': ['sysops'] });