Skip to main content

Triage AWS RDS DB CPU Utilization HIGH_CPU_UTILIZATION

  1. Configure AWS RDS DB CPU Utilization
  2. Use Case for AWS RDS DB CPU Utilization
  3. Triage Guides by Violation Type
    1. Triage AWS RDS DB CPU Utilization HIGH_CPU_UTILIZATION
    2. Triage AWS RDS DB CPU Utilization LOW_CPU_UTILIZATION

Triage Guide for HIGH_CPU_UTILIZATION

0) Understand​

High CPU utilization on an RDS DB instance indicates that the instance might be undersized for its workload. Continuously high CPU usage can lead to increased latency and degraded performance.

1) Validate​

  • Data Source: AWS CloudWatch
  • Manual Retrieval: Execute a CloudWatch GetMetricStatistics API call for the CPUUtilization metric of the specified RDS DB instance.
  • Frequency: This policy runs reactively based on historical CPU utilization data over the past 30 days.

2) Triage​

  • Impact: High CPU utilization can lead to performance issues and potential downtime.
  • Worsening Over Time: Yes, if the workload increases or no action is taken.
  • Possible Downtime: Increasing the instance size or optimizing queries might require a maintenance window.

3) Act​

  • Consider resizing the instance to a larger size or optimizing the queries hitting the database.
  • Investigate whether the workload can be distributed across additional instances or read replicas.

4) Reflect​

  • If this alert was not useful, review the thresholds and adjust them if needed.
  • Ensure the query patterns and workload expectations are well understood and documented.