What are the main monitoring or other parameters to check if the instance is underutilized—the MySQL RDS instance?

Question

Hi Team,

We have a MySQL RDS instance with the 'db.m5.8xlarge' type, and I want to share a report with the customer to see if the instance is underutilized or not. I have checked the CPU utilization and free memory monitoring parameters, but I want to know what other things should be checked to decide on the utilization.

Please share some detailed explanations.

Answer

The AWS RDS Console has a default metrics page that will show you the common metrics in a dashboard such as CPU utilization, IOPS, memory utilization, etc.
Just click on the monitoring tab from the database detail page.

Answer

Hello.

The CloudWatch metrics I often see for RDS are performance-related metrics such as "ReadIOPS", "ReadLatency", and "ReadThroughput".  
By looking at these metrics, you will be able to understand whether loading is occurring to some extent.  
https://docs.aws.amazon.com/AmazonRDS/latest/UserGuide/rds-metrics.html

If your AWS account is subscribed to an AWS support plan higher than business support, you may be able to check for RDS with low usage by checking Trusted Advisor.  
https://docs.aws.amazon.com/awssupport/latest/user/get-started-with-aws-trusted-advisor.html#view-check-categories  
https://docs.aws.amazon.com/awssupport/latest/user/cost-optimization-checks.html#amazon-rds-idle-dbs-instances

What are the main monitoring or other parameters to check if the instance is underutilized—the MySQL RDS instance?

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