AWS Direct Connect Gateway monitoring

AWS Direct Connect Gateway enables you to connect your Direct Connect connection to multiple VPCs across AWS accounts and Regions through a transit gateway or virtual private gateway. It provides a centralized way to establish connectivity between your on-premises network and your AWS resources.

Site24x7’s AWS Direct Connect Gateway monitoring helps you track the availability and configuration of your Direct Connect gateways, monitor their gateway associations and attached virtual interfaces along with their states, and identify connectivity issues across your hybrid AWS environment.

Overview

By integrating AWS Direct Connect with Site24x7, you can discover and monitor your Direct Connect resources, including Direct Connect Gateways. The Direct Connect Gateway is discovered along with the Direct Connect monitor and provides visibility into the gateway’s availability, attached interfaces, and gateway associations.

Use case

A Direct Connect Gateway can serve as a central connectivity point between your on-premises infrastructure and multiple AWS networks. However, issues with the gateway, its associations, or attached virtual interfaces can affect connectivity across multiple workloads.

For example, an organization may use a Direct Connect Gateway to connect an on-premises data center to a Transit Gateway that provides connectivity to multiple VPCs. If the gateway association becomes unavailable or a virtual interface attachment enters an unexpected state, traffic between the on-premises environment and AWS resources may be disrupted.

With Site24x7, you can monitor the Direct Connect Gateway and its associated resources from a single console. This helps you identify gateway availability issues, track the number of attached virtual interfaces and gateway associations, and troubleshoot connectivity problems through the related Virtual Interface and Transit Gateway monitors.

Benefits of monitoring AWS Direct Connect Gateway

Site24x7’s AWS Direct Connect Gateway monitoring helps you:

• Monitor Direct Connect Gateway availability, attached interface count, association count, and gateway associations from the Direct Connect monitor.
• Track the number of virtual interfaces attached to the gateway.
• Set thresholds and receive alerts when monitored attributes cross configured limits.
• Analyze historical data to identify connectivity patterns and potential issues.

Setup and configuration

1. Log in to your Site24x7 account.
2. Go to Cloud > AWS > Integrate AWS Account and create a cross-account IAM role to enable Site24x7 to access your AWS resources.
3. On the Integrate AWS Account page, select Direct Connect from the Services to be discovered list based on your requirement.

Permissions

Ensure that Site24x7 receives the following permissions to monitor Direct Connect Gateway:

• "directconnect:DescribeDirectConnectGateways"
• "directconnect:DescribeDirectConnectGatewayAttachments"
• "directconnect:DescribeDirectConnectGatewayAssociations"

Polling frequency

Site24x7 queries AWS service-level APIs according to the set polling frequency (from once a minute to once a day) to collect metrics from Direct Connect Gateway monitors.

Supported metrics

The supported metrics for Direct Connect Gateway monitors are given below.

Related monitor metrics:

• Direct Connect
• Direct Connect - Virtual Interface

Threshold configuration

To configure thresholds for Direct Connect Gateway monitors:

1. Navigate to Admin > Configuration Profiles > Threshold and Availability.
2. Click Add Threshold Profile.
3. Select Direct Connect Gateway from the Monitor Type drop-down menu.
4. Provide an appropriate name in the Display Name field.
5. The supported metrics are displayed in the Threshold Configuration section. You can set threshold values for all the metrics mentioned above.
6. Click Save.

In addition to metric thresholds, you can enable the following options to receive alerts based on the state of associated resources:

• Attachment State Check: Enable this option to receive an alert when a Direct Connect attachment leaves the attached state.
• Association State Check: Enable this option to receive an alert when a gateway association leaves the associated state.
• Child Monitor Notification: Enable this option to receive an alert when a related monitor goes down.

Capacity planning for AWS Direct Connect Gateway

Site24x7 helps you analyze historical data from your Direct Connect Gateway to understand resource usage trends and plan for future connectivity requirements. You can monitor changes in the Attached Interface Count and Association Count over time to identify growth in connected resources and determine when your connectivity configuration may need to be reviewed or expanded. This historical visibility helps you plan for increasing interface and association requirements, assess resource utilization patterns, and make informed decisions as your AWS environment grows.

Organize AWS Direct Connect Gateway monitors with Monitor Groups

You can add Direct Connect Gateway monitors to Monitor Groups to organize resources based on your monitoring requirements. You can group monitors by AWS account, Region, environment, business unit, or connectivity architecture. This provides a consolidated view of related Direct Connect resources and makes it easier to monitor their availability and identify affected resources. Monitor Groups can also help simplify day-to-day monitoring, reporting, and dashboard management when you have multiple Direct Connect Gateway resources across your AWS environment.

Licensing

Direct Connect Gateway is a free monitor.

Viewing Direct Connect Gateway data

To view the Direct Connect Gateway monitor:

• From the Site24x7 console, navigate to Cloud > AWS > Direct Connect Gateway.

Monitor data

The monitor data for Direct Connect Gateway monitors are given below.