AWS Health events are a critical component of monitoring and maintaining AWS infrastructure. AWS Health provides personalized information about events that can affect your AWS resources, services, and accounts. As a SysOps Administrator, understanding Health events is essential for proactive incide…AWS Health events are a critical component of monitoring and maintaining AWS infrastructure. AWS Health provides personalized information about events that can affect your AWS resources, services, and accounts. As a SysOps Administrator, understanding Health events is essential for proactive incident management and maintaining system reliability.
There are two main categories of AWS Health events:
1. **Account-specific events**: These are events that directly impact your AWS resources. Examples include EC2 instance retirements, EBS volume issues, or scheduled maintenance windows. These events require your attention and often demand specific actions.
2. **Public events**: These are service-wide events affecting AWS services in specific regions. They inform you about operational issues or service disruptions that might impact your workloads.
AWS Health Dashboard (formerly Personal Health Dashboard) displays these events and provides:
- Detailed event descriptions
- Affected resources
- Recommended remediation steps
- Event timelines and status updates
For automation and integration, AWS Health integrates with Amazon EventBridge, allowing you to create rules that trigger automated responses. This enables you to:
- Send notifications via SNS to alert teams
- Invoke Lambda functions for automated remediation
- Create tickets in external systems
- Execute Systems Manager automation documents
Health events are categorized by type:
- **Scheduled changes**: Planned maintenance or updates
- **Account notifications**: Important information about your account
- **Issues**: Ongoing problems affecting services
For organizations using AWS Organizations, AWS Health Organizational View aggregates health events across all member accounts, providing centralized visibility.
Best practices include setting up EventBridge rules for critical event types, integrating with incident management tools, and regularly reviewing the Health Dashboard. This proactive approach helps minimize downtime and ensures rapid response to infrastructure issues affecting your AWS environment.
AWS Health Events - Complete Guide for SysOps Administrator Associate Exam
What is AWS Health?
AWS Health provides personalized information about events that can affect your AWS infrastructure, services, and accounts. It delivers relevant and timely information to help you manage events in progress, as well as provides proactive notifications to help you plan for scheduled activities.
Why is AWS Health Important?
AWS Health is critical for maintaining operational excellence because it:
• Provides real-time visibility into the health of AWS services that impact your resources • Enables proactive incident management by alerting you to issues before they affect your workloads • Helps with compliance and auditing by maintaining a history of events affecting your account • Allows automated responses to health events through integration with EventBridge • Reduces mean time to resolution (MTTR) by providing actionable guidance
Types of AWS Health Events
1. Account-Specific Events: These events are specific to your AWS account and resources. Examples include EC2 instance retirement notices, EBS volume issues, or certificate expiration warnings.
2. Public Events: These are service-wide events that affect all customers in a Region. Examples include regional service outages or degraded performance.
3. Scheduled Changes: Planned maintenance activities that may require action, such as RDS maintenance windows or hardware upgrades.
How AWS Health Works
1. AWS Health Dashboard: The primary interface for viewing health information, accessible through the AWS Console. It shows recent events, scheduled changes, and notifications.
2. AWS Health API: Programmatic access to health data, available to customers with Business or Enterprise Support plans.
3. Amazon EventBridge Integration: Health events can trigger EventBridge rules, enabling automated responses such as: • Sending notifications via SNS • Triggering Lambda functions for remediation • Creating tickets in external systems • Executing Systems Manager Automation documents
4. AWS Organizations Integration: Aggregate health events across all accounts in your organization using the Organizational Health feature.
Key Components
• Event Type Code: Identifies the specific type of event (e.g., AWS_EC2_INSTANCE_RETIREMENT) • Event Type Category: Classifies events as accountNotification, scheduledChange, or issue • Affected Entities: Lists the specific resources impacted by the event • Event Status: Shows whether an event is open, upcoming, or closed
Exam Tips: Answering Questions on AWS Health Events
Tip 1 - Know the Support Plan Requirements: The AWS Health API is only available with Business, Enterprise On-Ramp, or Enterprise Support plans. The Health Dashboard in the console is available to all customers.
Tip 2 - EventBridge is the Key to Automation: When a question asks about automating responses to health events, the answer typically involves Amazon EventBridge rules triggering Lambda functions, SNS notifications, or Systems Manager Automation.
Tip 3 - Organizational Health for Multi-Account: For questions about monitoring health across multiple AWS accounts, look for answers involving AWS Organizations and the organizational view in AWS Health.
Tip 4 - Understand Event Categories: • Issue - An ongoing problem with AWS services • Scheduled Change - Planned activities requiring preparation • Account Notification - Important information about your account
Tip 5 - Personal Health Dashboard vs Service Health Dashboard: The Personal Health Dashboard shows events specific to your account. The Service Health Dashboard shows the general status of all AWS services.
Tip 6 - Common Exam Scenarios: • EC2 instance retirement requiring migration • EBS volume degradation needing backup • RDS maintenance windows requiring scheduling • Certificate expiration warnings
Tip 7 - Remember CloudWatch Integration: While Health events go to EventBridge, you can create CloudWatch alarms based on metrics from remediation actions triggered by health events.
Sample Architecture Pattern
AWS Health Event → EventBridge Rule → Lambda Function → SNS Topic → Email/SMS Notification
This pattern is frequently tested and represents best practices for operational awareness and incident response.