AWS Trusted Advisor Test

Trusted Advisor draws upon best practices learned from serving hundreds of thousands of AWS customers. Trusted Advisor inspects your AWS environment, and then makes recommendations when opportunities exist to save money, improve system availability and performance, or help close security gaps.

By rapidly capturing and reviewing these recommendations, administrators can take smart and timely cost-saving, performance-enhancing, and security-related decisions, so that cloud usage, health, and security can be optimized. The AWS Trusted Advisor test helps administrators in taking such prudent and well-informed decisions!

This test monitors the following categories of checks:

Cost optimization
Performance
Security
Fault Tolerance
Service Limits
Operational Excellence

For each check category, the test reports the following:

Were any actions recommended?
Were any investigations recommended?
Did any checks detect problems?
Did any checks report that critical capabilities / features have not been installed / have been disabled in the AWS account?
Were cost savings estimated by any of the checks?

Detailed diagnostics reveal the exact checks that reported cost savings, revealed configuration / security issues, or made recommendations. With the help of these insights, administrators can easily use AWS Trusted Advisor to look up the relevant checks, analyze the recommendations that were made, and troubleshoot the anomalies that were brought to light.

Target of the test: Amazon Cloud

Agent deploying the test: A remote agent

Output of the test: One set of results for each category of checks performed by the AWS Trusted Advisor

Configurable parameters for the test
Parameter	Description
Test Period	How often should the test be executed.
Host	The host for which the test is to be configured.
Access Type	eG Enterprise monitors the AWS cloud using AWS API. By default, the eG agent accesses the AWS API using a valid AWS account ID, which is assigned a special role that is specifically created for monitoring purposes. Accordingly, the Access Type parameter is set to Role by default. Furthermore, to enable the eG agent to use this default access approach, you will have to configure the eG tests with a valid AWS Account ID to Monitor and the special AWS Role Name you created for monitoring purposes. Some AWS cloud environments however, may not support the role-based approach. Instead, they may allow cloud API requests only if such requests are signed by a valid Access Key and Secret Key. When monitoring such a cloud environment therefore, you should change the Access Type to Secret. Then, you should configure the eG tests with a valid AWS Access Key and AWS Secret Key. Note that the Secret option may not be ideal when monitoring high-security cloud environments. This is because, such environments may issue a security mandate, which would require administrators to change the Access Key and Secret Key, often. Because of the dynamicity of the key-based approach, Amazon recommends the Role-based approach for accessing the AWS API.
AWS Account ID to Monitor	This parameter appears only when the Access Type parameter is set to Role. Specify the AWS Account ID that the eG agent should use for connecting and making requests to the AWS API. To determine your AWS Account ID, follow the steps below: Login to the AWS management console. with your credentials. Click on your IAM user/role on the top right corner of the AWS Console. You will see a drop-down menu containing the Account ID (see Figure 1). Figure 1 : Identifying the AWS Account ID
AWS Role Name	This parameter appears when the Access Type parameter is set to Role. Specify the name of the role that you have specifically created on the AWS cloud for monitoring purposes. The eG agent uses this role and the configured Account ID to connect to the AWS Cloud and pull the required metrics. To know how to create such a role, refer to Creating a New Role.
AWS Access Key, AWS Secret Key, Confirm AWS Access Key, Confirm AWS Secret Key	These parameters appear only when the Access Type parameter is set to Secret.To monitor an Amazon instance, the eG agent has to be configured with the access key and secret key of a user with a valid AWS account. For this purpose, we recommend that you create a special user on the AWS cloud, obtain the access and secret keys of this user, and configure this test with these keys. The procedure for this has been detailed in the Obtaining an Access key and Secret key topic. Make sure you reconfirm the access and secret keys you provide here by retyping it in the corresponding Confirm text boxes.
Proxy Host and Proxy Port	In some environments, all communication with the AWS cloud and its regions could be routed through a proxy server. In such environments, you should make sure that the eG agent connects to the cloud via the proxy server and collects metrics. To enable metrics collection via a proxy, specify the IP address of the proxy server and the port at which the server listens against the Proxy Host and Proxy Port parameters. By default, these parameters are set to none , indicating that the eG agent is not configured to communicate via a proxy, by default.
Proxy User Name, Proxy Password, and Confirm Password	If the proxy server requires authentication, then, specify a valid proxy user name and password in the proxy user name and proxy password parameters, respectively. Then, confirm the password by retyping it in the CONFIRM PASSWORD text box. By default, these parameters are set to none, indicating that the proxy sever does not require authentication by default.
Proxy Domain and Proxy Workstation	If a Windows NTLM proxy is to be configured for use, then additionally, you will have to configure the Windows domain name and the Windows workstation name required for the same against the proxy domain and proxy workstation parameters. If the environment does not support a Windows NTLM proxy, set these parameters to none.
DD Frequency	Refers to the frequency with which detailed diagnosis measures are to be generated for this test. The default is 1:1. This indicates that, by default, detailed measures will be generated every time this test runs, and also every time the test detects a problem. You can modify this frequency, if you so desire. Also, if you intend to disable the detailed diagnosis capability for this test, you can do so by specifying none against DD frequency.
Detailed Diagnosis	To make diagnosis more efficient and accurate, the eG Enterprise embeds an optional detailed diagnostic capability. With this capability, the eG agents can be configured to run detailed, more elaborate tests as and when specific problems are detected. To enable the detailed diagnosis capability of this test for a particular server, choose the On option. To disable the capability, click on the Off option. The option to selectively enable/disable the detailed diagnosis capability will be available only if the following conditions are fulfilled: The eG manager license should allow the detailed diagnosis capability Both the normal and abnormal frequencies configured for the detailed diagnosis measures should not be 0.

Measures reported by the test:
Measurement	Description	Measurement Unit	Interpretation
Estimated monthly savings	Indicates the monthly cost savings estimated by the checks of this category.	USD	This measure is reported only for the cost_optimizing descriptor. Use the detailed diagnosis of this measure to identify the checks that reported cost savings and the actual savings estimated by each check. In the process, you can identify the check that estimated the maximum savings.
No problems detected	Indicates the number of checks of this type/category that reported no problems.	Number	Use the detailed diagnosis of this measure to know which checks did not report any problems.
Investigation recommended	Indicates the number of checks of this type/category that recommended investigations.	Number	Use the detailed diagnosis of this measure to know which checks recommended investigations.
Not installed status	Indicates the number of checks of this type/category that reported that a feature / capability/ configuration is not installed / disabled.	Number	Use the detailed diagnosis of this measure to know which checks reported a capability as not installed / disabled.
Action recommended	Indicates the number of checks of this type/category that recommended actions.	Number	Use the detailed diagnosis of this measure to know which checks recommended actions.