Wondering how to diagnose high cpu utilization on ec2 windows? We can help you with this!

As a part of our AWS Support Services, we often receive similar requests from our AWS customers.

Today, let’s see the steps followed by our Support Techs to help our customers to diagnose high cpu utilization on ec2 windows.

 

Diagnose high cpu utilization on ec2 windows

 
Before getting into the resolution, Follow the below steps to find the instance.

1. Log in to the AWS Management Console and open the Amazon EC2 console.

2.Then select Instances.

3. Select the instance and note the instance type from the Description tab.

4. Then choose instance settings and Change T2/T3 Unlimited. This setting is only for T2 or T3 instances.

5. Note whether T2/T3 Unlimited is enabled or disabled.

Now we need to follow the steps in the section below that corresponds to the instance type and the scenario.

We can troubleshoot the particular application after finding the process causing high CPU utilization. We can check the CPU Credit Balance and the CPU within the OS to verify if the CPU is being throttled.
 

T2/T3 Unlimited is disabled on T2 or T3 instances, and not sure about the CPU is being throttled

Checking the CPU credit balance

 
By following the steps below to find the CPU credit balance:

1. Firstly, Log in to the AWS Management console and then open the Amazon EC2 console.

2. Then select Instances.

3. Select the instance.

4. From the Monitoring tab, we can find the current number of remaining credits on the CPU credit balance graph.

If the CPU credit balance is close to zero, then the instance CPU is likely being throttled.

For resolving this issue, we can either enable T2/T3 Unlimited or change the instance type.
 

Checking the CPU utilization on the OS

1. At first, Log in to the AWS Management console and then open the Amazon EC2 console.

2. select Instancesand then choose the instance that we want to troubleshoot.

3. From the Monitoring tab, we can see the CPU utilization.

4. Confirm that the average is close to the baseline performance per vCPU for our instance type.

5. Using RDP, connect to the instance.

6. Finally, open Task Manager and note the CPU utilization on the OS.

Here, in Task Manager, if the CPU utilization is close to 100%, but is close to the baseline in the console, then the instance’s CPU is being throttled. For resolving this issue, we can either enable T2/T3 Unlimited or change the instance type.
 

​T2/T3 Unlimited is disabled on T2 or T3 instances, and we know that the CPU is being throttled

 
For resolving CPU throttling, we can either enable T2/T3 Unlimited, or change the instance type.
 

Enabling T2/T3 Unlimited

1. Open the Amazon EC2 console, and then select Instances.

2. Select the instance.

3. Select Instance Settings, Change T2/T3 Unlimited and then select Enable.

Note that this resolution has no downtime, but it may cost more if the instance has to burst often. Also if we still face high CPU utilization after enabling T2/T3 Unlimited, we need to check and troubleshoot the process that is causing the issue.
 

Changing the instance type

 
Before changing the instance type we need to stop the instance.

We can change to any of the following instance types:

1. A T2 or T3 instance type with a higher CPU credit limit.
2. An instance type that doesn’t use a CPU credit bucket model.

This resolution solution allows us to select a better instance upon our current needs if the instance has to burst often.

Note: If the case is T2/T3 Unlimited is enabled on T2 or T3 instances or T2 or T3 instance isn’t being throttled, and need help with investigating at the OS level or instance type isn’t T2 or T3 and CPU throttling isn’t the source of the problem, we can investigate at the OS level.

[Need help with more AWS queries? We’d be happy to assist]
 

Conclusion

 
To conclude, today we discussed the steps followed by our Support Engineers to help our customers to diagnose high cpu utilization on ec2 windows.