Working with CloudWatch alarms and metrics

In this recipe, we will create a CloudWatch alarm using one of the metrics already available. Being the first recipe about CloudWatch, we will also learn about some of the important features of CloudWatch.

Getting ready

Create an SNS topic with an email subscription by following the Creating an SNS topic to send emails recipe.

How to do it...

We can create a CloudWatch alarm using existing metrics as follows:

1. Go to the CloudWatch service in the console.
2. Click on Alarms from the left sidebar.
3. Click on Create alarm.
4. Click on Select...