AWS Cloud Practitioner Study Notes · Part 49
AWS Health Dashboard: Public Events, Account Health, and Alerts
AWS Cloud Practitioner study notes comparing AWS Health public and account-specific events, EventBridge alerts, APIs, CloudWatch, and CloudTrail.
The AWS Health Dashboard provides information about AWS service events and how those events may affect your account and resources. It helps answer two different questions:
Is AWS reporting a public service event in a Region?
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AWS Health Dashboard – Service health
Does this event affect my account or resources?
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AWS Health Dashboard – Your account healthThis is Part 49 of the AWS Cloud Practitioner Study Notes. The older names Service Health Dashboard and Personal Health Dashboard have been rebranded in current AWS documentation as the AWS Health Dashboard – Service health and AWS Health Dashboard – Your account health.
What AWS Health tells you
AWS Health reports events from AWS services that may affect availability, maintenance, planned changes, or resources in your account. Examples include:
- A public service issue in an AWS Region
- Scheduled maintenance affecting a specific EC2 instance
- A required update or planned lifecycle event
- An AWS service issue with affected account resources
- Other account notifications and recommended actions
AWS Health can provide event details, affected resources, event status, timelines, and recommended actions. It is an AWS infrastructure and service-health signal—not a replacement for application monitoring.
Public service health events
The public Service health view is available without signing in. It shows reported service events across AWS services and Regions:
Amazon EC2 – US East (Ohio)
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Public service event
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Anyone can view the eventPublic events are not specific to your account. An event can appear even when you do not use the affected service or Region.
Use the public view when you need to answer:
- Is AWS reporting an outage in
us-east-2? - Are other customers seeing a service issue?
- Is a problem likely broader than my account configuration?
The public service-health page is available at health.aws.amazon.com/health/status.
Account-specific health events
Sign in to view Your account health. Account-specific events are associated with your account, organisation account, services, or resources. Examples include:
- An EC2 instance requiring scheduled maintenance
- A resource affected by an AWS service issue
- A planned change requiring customer action
- An account notification or service-specific recommendation
AWS identifies a service or infrastructure event
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AWS matches it to your account or resources
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Your account health view shows affected entitiesThe account view includes areas such as Open and recent issues, Scheduled changes, Other notifications, Event log, and affected resources. AWS documents that account events can be filtered by service, Region, Availability Zone, event time, and other fields.
Public versus account-specific events
| Feature | Service health | Your account health |
|---|---|---|
| Sign-in required | No | Yes |
| Audience | Anyone | Your account or organisation |
| Event scope | Public AWS service event | Account-specific or resource-specific event |
| Shows whether your resource is affected | Usually no | Yes, when affected resources are identified |
| Scheduled changes for your resources | No | Yes |
| Typical question | Is AWS having a Regional issue? | Is my EC2 instance affected? |
The distinction is about event scope, not whether AWS is involved. Both views can contain AWS service information, but only account-specific health information is tailored to your resources.
Common event types
Issues
An issue is an active or historical event affecting an AWS service or account resource. For example, AWS might report connectivity or launch problems affecting EC2 in a Region.
Scheduled changes
Scheduled changes tell you about planned maintenance, required updates, or lifecycle activities. A scheduled EC2 maintenance event may list the specific instance or resource and provide a maintenance window or recommended action.
Account notifications
Other notifications can include service-specific account messages, planned changes, or actions that AWS expects the customer to consider. The exact event types depend on the service and event.
AWS Health events are notifications sent on behalf of AWS services. They can describe a current issue, upcoming change, affected entity, or recommended remediation.
AWS Health and EventBridge
EventBridge lets you react automatically when AWS Health events change:
AWS Health event
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Amazon EventBridge rule
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SNS, Lambda, Step Functions, or another target
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Email, Slack, ticket, incident, or automated workflowPossible workflows include:
- Send an SNS email to the operations team.
- Create a Jira or ServiceNow ticket through a Lambda integration.
- Post a notification to Slack or Microsoft Teams.
- Start a runbook or incident workflow.
- Notify the owner of an affected resource.
- Escalate scheduled maintenance to an on-call team.
When matching AWS Health events with EventBridge, use the documented event source aws.health. AWS distinguishes public and account-specific events with the eventScopeCode field. Build the event pattern carefully so the rule matches the events your organisation actually needs.
EventBridge is generally the recommended programmatic integration path instead of scraping the dashboard or relying on an RSS format that may change.
AWS Health API
Applications and enterprise monitoring platforms can query AWS Health through API operations such as:
DescribeEvents— list event summaries matching filtersDescribeAffectedEntities— identify affected resources or entitiesDescribeEventDetails— retrieve additional event details and recommended actions
The API separates event summary data from event details and affected entities. An application can therefore retrieve the event list, identify resources, and send a more useful notification to the appropriate service owner.
DescribeEvents
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DescribeAffectedEntities
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DescribeEventDetails
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Internal incident or maintenance workflowAWS Health API availability and access requirements can differ from the dashboard experience. Check the current API documentation and support-plan requirements for production integrations.
AWS Health versus CloudWatch
CloudWatch monitors your workloads and application signals. AWS Health reports AWS service and infrastructure events.
| AWS Health | Amazon CloudWatch |
|---|---|
| AWS service issue | CPU, memory, latency, and custom metrics |
| Scheduled AWS maintenance | Application and infrastructure alarms |
| Affected AWS resource | Logs and traces |
| Public or account-specific AWS event | Application dashboards and SLOs |
| Recommended AWS action | Threshold-based automation |
Example:
CloudWatch → EC2 CPU is 99%
AWS Health → AWS reports an event affecting the EC2 infrastructureBoth signals can be true at the same time. Use CloudWatch to investigate workload behavior and AWS Health to determine whether an AWS-side event may explain it.
AWS Health versus CloudTrail
CloudTrail records AWS API activity: who called an API, when it was called, what resource was affected, and whether the call succeeded.
AWS Health
→ Is AWS infrastructure or a service affecting me?
CloudTrail
→ Who called DeleteBucket or StopInstances?Use AWS Health for maintenance and service events. Use CloudTrail for security auditing, change investigation, compliance, and accountability.
AWS Health versus Trusted Advisor
Trusted Advisor evaluates resources against best-practice checks. AWS Health reports current or scheduled events.
| AWS Health | AWS Trusted Advisor |
|---|---|
| Current AWS issue | Best-practice recommendation |
| Scheduled maintenance | Cost optimisation check |
| Affected resource | Security and fault-tolerance check |
| Service availability event | Performance or service-quota guidance |
AWS Health
→ Something is happening to an AWS service or resource
Trusted Advisor
→ Here is how the account could follow AWS best practicesA production incident workflow
Imagine an application running on an ALB, EC2, and RDS. Users report failed requests:
User reports failures
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CloudWatch shows application errors and latency
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AWS Health shows an EC2 or RDS Regional event
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Check affected resources and recommended actions
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Apply the application or infrastructure recovery plan
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Monitor recovery with CloudWatchIf AWS Health reports that a specific EC2 instance requires host maintenance, the operations team can drain the instance from the load balancer, confirm replacement capacity, and follow the maintenance guidance. AWS Health identifies the AWS-side event; the customer still owns application continuity and recovery decisions.
What AWS Health does not do
AWS Health is not:
- A replacement for CPU, memory, log, or latency monitoring
- A general application health-check service
- A guarantee that an unaffected resource is healthy
- A substitute for backups, Multi-AZ design, or disaster recovery
- A record of every API call made in the account
- The same as Trusted Advisor best-practice analysis
Use AWS Health as one signal in a broader observability and incident-management strategy.
Common exam questions
You want to know whether AWS is reporting an outage in a Region.
Use the AWS Health Dashboard – Service health, the public view.
You want to know whether a maintenance event affects your specific EC2 instance.
Sign in to the AWS Health Dashboard – Your account health view.
You want to monitor CPU utilization and application latency.
Use Amazon CloudWatch.
You want to know who deleted an EC2 instance.
Use AWS CloudTrail.
You want cost and security best-practice recommendations.
Use AWS Trusted Advisor.
You want automatic notifications for AWS Health events.
Use AWS Health with Amazon EventBridge and a target such as SNS or Lambda.
Which API lists health event summaries?
DescribeEvents.
Final memory trick
CloudWatch
→ My workload
→ Metrics, logs, latency, alarms
CloudTrail
→ My API activity
→ Who did what and when
AWS Health
→ My AWS infrastructure and service events
→ Outages, maintenance, affected resources
AWS Health – Service health
→ Everyone's public AWS service statusThe exam takeaway is: CloudWatch monitors the workload, CloudTrail audits API activity, Trusted Advisor recommends improvements, and AWS Health explains AWS service events and their impact on your resources.