Concepts
Amazon SNS is a managed service for application-to-person (A2P) and application-to-application (A2A) communication. It allows you to set up, operate, and send notifications. To configure SNS notifications:
- Create a Topic:
- Navigate to the Amazon SNS console.
- Choose ‘Create topic’ and select the ‘Standard’ type.
- Enter a ‘Name’ and other properties as required.
- Create a Subscription:
- Select the created topic and choose ‘Create subscription’.
- Choose the ‘Protocol’ (e.g., Email, SMS, Lambda, SQS).
- Enter the ‘Endpoint’ (e.g., email address, phone number).
- Set the subscription filter policies if required to filter messages.
- Publish a Message:
- Select your topic and choose ‘Publish message’.
- Enter the ‘Subject’ and ‘Message’.
- Choose ‘Publish’.
You can also utilize the AWS SDK or AWS CLI to automate these steps:
# Create a topic via AWS CLI
aws sns create-topic –name MyTopic
# Subscribe an email to the topic
aws sns subscribe –topic-arn arn:aws:sns:region:account-id:MyTopic –protocol email –notification-endpoint user@example.com
Service Quotas
Service Quotas allows you to view and manage your quotas easily from a central location. To set up notifications for quota thresholds:
- Navigate to the Service Quotas console.
- Select a service, and then choose a specific quota.
- Click on ‘Configure’ under Alarms.
- Select ‘Create’, set a percentage threshold, and choose to ‘Create an Amazon SNS topic’ or use an existing one.
- Follow the SNS topic creation flow if you’re creating a new one.
- Once setup, you’ll receive notifications when your usage approaches the set quota thresholds.
CloudWatch Alarms
For CloudWatch Alarms:
- Open the CloudWatch console.
- Navigate to ‘Alarms’ and select ‘Create alarm’.
- Select a metric (for example, CPU Utilization for EC2), specify the threshold, and other conditions.
- Under actions, select an SNS topic or create a new one to notify when the alarm state is reached.
Example of creating a CloudWatch alarm with AWS CLI:
# Create a CloudWatch alarm
aws cloudwatch put-metric-alarm –alarm-name cpu-mon –metric-name CPUUtilization –namespace AWS/EC2 –statistic Average –period 300 –threshold 80 –comparison-operator GreaterThanThreshold –dimensions Name=InstanceId,Value=i-1234567890abcdef0 –evaluation-periods 2 –alarm-actions arn:aws:sns:region:account-id:MyTopic –unit Percent
AWS Health Events
To receive notifications for AWS Health events:
- Open the AWS Health Dashboard or use the AWS Health API.
- Create an AWS Personal Health Dashboard alert by choosing ‘Event log’ and filtering by service, event type, and other parameters as applicable.
- Use the Amazon CloudWatch Events (now Amazon EventBridge) to set up event rules that trigger on AWS Health events.
- Select the AWS Health service source and choose the event type.
- As a target, configure an SNS topic to send notifications when specific health events are detected.
With these steps and examples, you can set up a robust notification system across your AWS environment that keeps you informed about various system states and events. Each service’s console offers comprehensive documentation and guidance for more complex setups or additional configurations. Always review your configured notifications periodically to ensure they remain effective and relevant to your operational requirements.
Answer the Questions in Comment Section
True or False: Amazon SNS does not support sending notifications via SMS.
- 1) True
- 2) False
Answer: False
Explanation: Amazon SNS supports multiple protocols for notifications, including HTTP, HTTPS, email, SMS, and more.
What is the first step to receive notifications for AWS Health events?
- 1) Create an Amazon SNS topic.
- 2) Subscribe to the AWS Health Dashboard.
- 3) Configure AWS Config.
- 4) Enable AWS Health API.
Answer: Create an Amazon SNS topic.
Explanation: To receive notifications for AWS Health events, you must first create an Amazon SNS topic to which you can publish the health events.
Which AWS service can generate custom alerts based on metrics for AWS resources?
- 1) AWS Config
- 2) AWS Trusted Advisor
- 3) Amazon CloudFront
- 4) Amazon CloudWatch
Answer: Amazon CloudWatch
Explanation: Amazon CloudWatch allows you to set alarms and send notifications based on metric thresholds for various AWS services.
True or False: Service Quotas allow you to track usage and send an alert when 80% of a service quota is reached.
- 1) True
- 2) False
Answer: True
Explanation: Service Quotas can monitor the usage of AWS services and can be configured to alert you when usage reaches a certain threshold, such as 80% of the service quota.
Which of the following is a valid subscriber for an Amazon SNS topic?
- 1) An AWS Lambda function
- 2) An EC2 Instance
- 3) A Virtual Private Gateway
- 4) A VPC Endpoint
Answer: An AWS Lambda function
Explanation: An AWS Lambda function can be subscribed to an Amazon SNS topic to automatically trigger a function execution upon receiving a notification.
True or False: It is not possible to re-send a message from Amazon SNS if a subscriber does not acknowledge it.
- 1) True
- 2) False
Answer: False
Explanation: Amazon SNS supports message retries where if a message is not successfully delivered or acknowledged, it will attempt to redeliver the message based on the topic’s retry policy settings.
When setting up an alarm in Amazon CloudWatch, what can trigger the alarm?
- 1) Changes in an EC2 instance state.
- 2) Specific patterns in log files.
- 3) Breaching a predefined threshold of a metric.
- 4) Updating of an IAM policy.
Answer: Breaching a predefined threshold of a metric.
Explanation: Amazon CloudWatch alarms are triggered when a metric breaches a threshold set by the user for a specified number of evaluation periods.
True or False: Amazon CloudWatch can be used to monitor live video streaming on Amazon CloudFront.
- 1) True
- 2) False
Answer: True
Explanation: Amazon CloudWatch integrates with Amazon CloudFront and can monitor several metrics to provide insights into the streaming performance.
What happens when a CloudWatch alarm transitions to an “ALARM” state?
- 1) It automatically resolves the underlying issue.
- 2) It sends a notification using Amazon SNS.
- 3) It creates a snapshot of the EC2 instance.
- 4) It restarts the affected AWS service.
Answer: It sends a notification using Amazon SNS.
Explanation: When a CloudWatch alarm transitions to the “ALARM” state, it can perform actions such as sending a notification to an Amazon SNS topic, but it cannot autonomously resolve issues or create snapshots.
True or False: You can have Amazon SNS send notifications directly to an Amazon SQS queue.
- 1) True
- 2) False
Answer: True
Explanation: Amazon SNS can send messages directly to an Amazon SQS queue, allowing for decoupled, scalable architectures where messages can be processed asynchronously.
Multiple Select: Which of the following AWS resources allow you to receive notifications about service availability and performance?
- 1) AWS Personal Health Dashboard
- 2) AWS Billing Dashboard
- 3) Amazon S3 bucket
- 4) AWS Support Center
Answer: AWS Personal Health Dashboard, AWS Support Center
Explanation: The AWS Personal Health Dashboard provides alerts and remediation guidance for AWS Health events, while AWS Support Center might communicate service-related issues and actions required. An S3 bucket and the AWS Billing Dashboard don’t have such alerting capabilities by themselves.
Great post on configuring Amazon SNS notifications. Really helped me understand how to set it up for my projects!
Can anyone explain how to integrate CloudWatch alarms with SNS for automatic notifications?
This tutorial is quite useful, thanks!
I appreciate the detailed steps. It made setting up notifications a breeze.
The section on Service Quotas was somewhat confusing. Anyone else had issues?
Thanks for the tutorial, very helpful!
How are AWS Health events important for sysadmins compared to regular CloudWatch alarms?
This guide is fantastic. A life-saver for my certification prep.