How do I troubleshoot a dashboard widget that doesn't show any data in CloudWatch?

Short description

CloudWatch dashboards have widgets that you can create and configure to show specific graphs for metrics that you select. If you incorrectly configured the widget, then the widget doesn't show data.

The following are common causes of widgets that don't show any data:

• Incorrectly selected metric
• Incorrect period
• Incorrect namespace, metric name, dimension, or any other metric metadata
• Inactive metric
• Incorrect statistic

Resolution

Incorrectly selected metric

When you create a widget that has no metrics in the widget or source, check for the following message:

"No data available. Try adjusting the dashboard time range."

This issue might occur if you use AWS Cloud Development Kit (AWS CDK) or the AWS Command Line Interface (AWS CLI) to call the PutDashboard API. When you try to create a widget, the option to create one is grayed out on the CloudWatch console.

To resolve this issue, review the widget configuration or source to confirm that you selected the correct metric. To review the dashboard source, go to Actions on the console, and then choose View/Edit Source. If the segment for metrics has an empty selection, then metrics:[] is shown. Find the correct metric, and select it.

Incorrect period

An incorrect period selection might cause a graph not to show all data points on a widget. Make sure that the period setting for the dashboard matches the metrics retention period.

See the following period settings details:

• Data points with a period of less than 60 seconds are available for 3 hours. These data points are high-resolution, custom metrics.
• Data points with a period of 60 seconds (one minute) are available for 15 days.
• Data points with a period of 300 seconds (five minutes) are available for 63 days.
• Data points with a period of 3600 seconds (one hour) are available for 455 days (15 months).

Example scenario

If a period setting is 30 seconds and the widget time range exceeds 2 weeks, then only the past 3 hours of data shows.

Note: It's a best practice to keep the period setting to Auto to make sure that the retention time matches the widget time range.

Incorrect namespace, metric name, dimension, or any other metric metadata

If you create a widget with incorrect metric metadata such as namespace, metric name, and dimensions, then the metric doesn't show any data.

In the following example metric definition, IncomingBtes and IncomingLogEents are incorrectly spelled:

"metrics": [
[ "AWS/Logs", "IncomingBtes", "LogGroupName", "/aws/events/output" ],
[ ".", "IncomingLogEents", ".", "." ]
]

To resolve a metric definition that shows incorrect data, make sure that the metric metadata matches the metrics in the CloudWatch console.

Inactive metric

If a metric that you selected on a widget doesn't show any new data for 14 days, then the metric is removed from the CloudWatch console. It's a best practice to select periods that show data for more than 14 days. To display the metric on the widget, make sure that you use the same metric data.

Incorrect statistic

An incorrect statistic selection might cause a metric on a widget to show incorrect data points. For more information, see CloudWatch statistics definitions.