Amazon CloudWatch now supports warm-up periods for alarms

Amazon CloudWatch Warm-Up Period for Metric and Log Alarms

Amazon CloudWatch now allows you to configure a warm-up period for metric alarms and log alarms, delaying alarm evaluation for a set time after the alarm is created. This feature reduces noise from missing data while a new resource or service starts up and begins publishing metrics.

Previously, when you created an alarm before the underlying metric was reporting data, CloudWatch evaluated the alarm right away using its "treat missing data" setting. This could cause the alarm to transition state and run actions on missing data during startup, triggering unnecessary notifications. A warm-up period fixes this by giving you two ways to hold off evaluation during startup: wait a fixed duration you set before evaluation begins, or let CloudWatch start evaluating automatically as soon as the metric actually has enough data to fill the alarm's evaluation window.

You set the warm-up period with the WarmUpConfiguration parameter when you create or update an alarm. Specify a warm-up duration from 1 to 2,880 minutes (2 days). By default, the alarm ends warm-up early and begins evaluating as soon as enough data fills its evaluation window. Additionally, you can optionally require the alarm to wait the full duration before evaluating.

What to do

• Configure a warm-up period for your alarms to avoid unnecessary notifications during startup.
• Set a warm-up duration from 1 to 2,880 minutes (2 days).
• Optionally require the alarm to wait the full duration before evaluating.

Warm-up periods are available in all AWS Regions where Amazon CloudWatch is offered at no additional charge beyond standard CloudWatch alarm pricing.

To get started, see Alarm warm-up periods and Create an alarm that uses a warm-up period in the Amazon CloudWatch User Guide.

Source: AWS release notes

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