Learn how to read AWS CloudWatch metrics from boto3. Our AWS Support team is here to help you with your questions and concerns.

How to Read AWS CloudWatch metrics from boto3

Are you looking for a way to read AWS CloudWatch metrics from Python with the Boto3 library?

Our experts suggest using the boto3.client method to create a CloudWatch client. In other words, this client will help us access the metric data.

Boto3 is the AWS SDK for Python. It makes it easy to interact with AWS services like CloudWatch.

Let’s take a quick look at how to read CloudWatch metrics via Boto3:

1. First, we have to install Boto3 via pip.
2. Then, we have to import the Boto3 library and create a CloudWatch client in our Python script. We will need to mention our AWS credentials and the AWS region as seen here:

   

   Remember to replace ‘ACCESS_KEY’, ‘SECRET_KEY’, and ‘us-east-1’ with the actual AWS access credentials and the desired AWS region.
3. Now, it is time to use the get_metric_data method of the CloudWatch client to retrieve metric data.

   For example, here is how to access the average CPU utilization data for an EC2 instance over the last hour:

   

   Here, we can change the StartTime and EndTime values to specify the time range for our metric query.
4. After we get the response from the get_metric_data method, we can parse and process this data as needed.

Our experts would like to point out that the example in the above steps demonstrates how to read a single metric. Alternatively, we can choose to query multiple metrics by adding more items to the MetricDataQueries list in the get_metric_data request. Furthermore, we can retrieve different statistics by modifying the Stat parameter.

Here are a few troubleshooting tips in case you run into trouble while retrieving the metrics:

• Check AWS credentials for CloudWatch access permissions.
• Ensure AWS CLI or environment variables have correct credentials.
• Confirm credentials in the code if not provided explicitly.

[Need assistance with a different issue? Our team is available 24/7.]

Conclusion

In brief, our Support Techs demonstrated how to read AWS CloudWatch metrics from boto3.