How many critical resources in your AWS environment are running without Amazon CloudWatch alarms? It's a question most infrastructure teams can't answer confidently. As environments scale and teams move fast, monitoring coverage develops gaps - databases get deployed without alarms, test instances migrate to production without proper oversight, and blind spots emerge that only become visible during an outage.
The newest version release v0.6.4 for Bearse, base2Services’ automated Infrastructure as Code (IaC) deployment and governance tool, addresses this concern. It introduces Metrics Monitor, an automated solution that continuously scans your AWS infrastructure to identify resources lacking Amazon CloudWatch monitoring. Instead of discovering monitoring gaps during incidents, you now get proactive alerts about coverage issues before they impact your services.
How Metrics Monitor Works
Metrics Monitor automatically scans AWS resources every hour to detect monitoring gaps. Currently supporting Amazon Relational Database Service (RDS) instances, it cross-references available Amazon CloudWatch metrics with existing alarm configurations to identify resources without coverage. When unmonitored resources are detected, the system triggers critical alerts through your existing Amazon CloudWatch infrastructure, ensuring immediate visibility.
The tool respects your monitoring strategy through tag-based exclusions. Resources tagged with “base2_monitor: false” are automatically excluded from monitoring requirements - useful for temporary resources, development environments, or systems with alternative monitoring approaches. This intelligent filtering prevents alert fatigue while maintaining comprehensive coverage where it matters.
Practical Benefits
- Proactive Gap Detection:
Rather than discovering missing alarms during an outage, Metrics Monitor identifies coverage gaps before they cause problems. This shifts monitoring from reactive troubleshooting to proactive infrastructure management. - Scalable Oversight:
As environments grow, manually tracking monitoring coverage becomes impractical. Metrics Monitor scales automatically, handling hundreds of resources efficiently without manual intervention or complex configuration. - Consistent Standards:
The automated approach ensures monitoring standards are applied uniformly across your infrastructure, regardless of which team deployed the resource or when it was created.
What’s Next
Metric Monitor currently monitors Amazon RDS instances with a flexible architecture designed to expand to additional AWS services in the future. All alerts integrate seamlessly with your existing Amazon Simple Notification Service (SNS) topics and Amazon CloudWatch infrastructure, so no extra notification setup is required.
Bearse is an internal tool exclusive to base2Services, enabling consistent management of customer environments, ensuring security and compliance, and improving operational efficiency. If you are a current customer, no action is required as the base2 team will automatically update your environment and configure the new version.
If you would like to learn more about Bearse, check out our other blog posts about this great tool.
- Bearse Overview and Function
- Bearse Feature Reporting Now Powered by AWS Resource Explorer 2
- Proactive Container Image Scanner for AWS – Detect Vulnerabilities Fast
Or get in touch with us, if you are interested in using Bearse in your organization.
