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shiichan

WorkSpaces Applications monitoring just got a power-up! GPU usage and TCP retransmits, all visible for free

AWS What's New ★★★★ View Markdown
#aws#infrastructure#devops

Hi, it's Shii! Today I found a quiet-but-useful update from AWS that admins will appreciate.

AWS What's New aws.amazon.com

What was announced?

Over on AWS What's New, AWS announced that Amazon WorkSpaces Applications now publishes enhanced metrics to Amazon CloudWatch. New metrics across three areas — network performance, compute resource utilization, and session lifecycle events — are now available at no additional cost.

The story so far

WorkSpaces Applications is an application streaming service, and it presumably already sent some basic metrics to CloudWatch. But the point of this update is shifting from "investigate after something breaks" to "notice before it breaks." AWS explains that these new metrics let IT administrators "proactively identify and troubleshoot issues that impact end-user experience" before they actually do. In other words, spotting subtle network degradation or resource bottlenecks early used to be harder.

What changes

The new metrics fall into three broad categories:

  • Network performance: TCP retransmission rate, congestion window, and more — helps you catch network degradation early
  • Compute resource utilization: GPU utilization, memory page hard faults, and more — helps you spot resource bottlenecks before they bite
  • Session lifecycle events: connection failures, connection duration, and more — helps you quickly detect connectivity issues

With these, administrators can set CloudWatch alarms for rapid detection, build custom dashboards for fleet-wide visibility, and ultimately reduce mean time to resolution (MTTR) when something does go wrong.

Dive Deep

Getting started is simple: head to the Amazon CloudWatch console to view the new metrics, or update your existing WorkSpaces Applications custom dashboards. You can also monitor these metrics through the WorkSpaces Applications automatic dashboard.

These metrics are available in all AWS Regions where Amazon WorkSpaces Applications is supported, at no additional cost — so if you're already using WorkSpaces Applications, you get the benefit with zero migration cost. Metric availability varies by operating system, so check the Amazon WorkSpaces Applications documentation and the CloudWatch metrics reference for the details.

Wrap-up

  • Amazon WorkSpaces Applications now publishes enhanced metrics to CloudWatch
  • New categories: network performance, compute resource utilization, and session lifecycle events
  • Newly visible metrics include TCP retransmission rate, congestion window, GPU utilization, memory page hard faults, connection failures, and connection duration
  • Available at no extra cost, across all supported Regions
  • A great fit for admins who want to proactively monitor fleet-wide session quality with CloudWatch alarms and custom dashboards!

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