Metrics exposed by AWS

AWS OpenSearch Service publishes a comprehensive set of metrics to CloudWatch, covering cluster health, resource utilization, and search performance. Commonly monitored metrics include:

• ClusterStatus.green/yellow/red: Indicates overall cluster health.

• FreeStorageSpace: Available disk space on data nodes.

• CPUUtilization: CPU usage across nodes.

• JVMMemoryPressure: JVM heap usage, which can impact performance.

• MasterCPUUtilization: CPU usage on master nodes.

• SearchLatency and IndexingLatency: Performance of search and indexing operations.

• AutomatedSnapshotFailure: Status of automated snapshots.

Explore full list of available metrics and their descriptions

Recommended CloudWatch alarms

For most OpenSearch monitoring needs, we recommend following the Recommended CloudWatch alarms for Amazon OpenSearch Service guide. This guidance covers essential metrics such as cluster health, storage, CPU, JVM memory pressure, and node availability. These standard alarms provide a strong foundation for maintaining the health and performance of your OpenSearch cluster.

In addition to the AWS recommendations, certain advanced metrics may be especially relevant for Jira workloads or specialized use cases. Consider setting alarms on the following metrics:

• CurrentPointInTime: Trigger an alarm if the maximum value is greater than 10 for 5 minutes (2 consecutive periods).

• AvgPointInTimeAliveTime: Trigger an alarm if the average value exceeds 5 minutes for 5 minutes (2 consecutive periods).

• ScrollCurrent: Trigger an alarm if the maximum value is greater than 5 for 5 minutes (2 consecutive periods). This is particularly relevant for operations such as delete_by_query.

These additional alarms can help you detect issues related to point-in-time (PIT) searches and scroll contexts, which are commonly used in Jira and might not be covered by AWS’s default recommendations. The thresholds and durations above are suggested defaults, adjust them to fit your domain, workload patterns, and operational SLOs.

Setting up alarms

You can set up CloudWatch alarms and dashboards using the AWS Console, AWS CLI, or automation tools such as CloudFormation. For standard alarms, you can use the OpenSearch CloudWatch Alarms guide, which covers the metrics recommended in the AWS documentation.

For Jira-specific custom alarms, such as CurrentPointInTime, AvgPointInTimeAliveTime, and ScrollCurrent, you'll need to define these alarms yourself. Below are example CloudFormation YAML snippets for these custom alarms.

We recommend integrating alarms with SNS or other notification services for timely alerts. Note that CloudWatch dashboards and alarms might incur additional AWS charges.

# Alarm for CurrentPointInTime
CurrentPointInTimeAlarm:
  Type: AWS::CloudWatch::Alarm
  Properties:
    AlarmName: "CurrentPointInTime-High"
    MetricName: "CurrentPointInTime"
    Namespace: "AWS/ES"
    Statistic: "Maximum"
    Period: 300
    EvaluationPeriods: 2
    Threshold: 10
    ComparisonOperator: "GreaterThanThreshold"
    Dimensions:
      - Name: DomainName
        Value: !Ref OpenSearchDomainName
    AlarmActions:
      - !Ref AlarmNotificationTopic
# Alarm for AvgPointInTimeAliveTime
AvgPointInTimeAliveTimeAlarm:
  Type: AWS::CloudWatch::Alarm
  Properties:
    AlarmName: "AvgPointInTimeAliveTime-High"
    MetricName: "AvgPointInTimeAliveTime"
    Namespace: "AWS/ES"
    Statistic: "Average"
    Period: 300
    EvaluationPeriods: 2
    Threshold: 300
    ComparisonOperator: "GreaterThanThreshold"
    Dimensions:
      - Name: DomainName
        Value: !Ref OpenSearchDomainName
    AlarmActions:
      - !Ref AlarmNotificationTopic
# Alarm for ScrollCurrent
ScrollCurrentAlarm:
  Type: AWS::CloudWatch::Alarm
  Properties:
    AlarmName: "ScrollCurrent-High"
    MetricName: "ScrollCurrent"
    Namespace: "AWS/ES"
    Statistic: "Maximum"
    Period: 300
    EvaluationPeriods: 2
    Threshold: 5
    ComparisonOperator: "GreaterThanThreshold"
    Dimensions:
      - Name: DomainName
        Value: !Ref OpenSearchDomainName
    AlarmActions:
      - !Ref AlarmNotificationTopic