From 5d3850c44e048f5619a04c14373c3324c2c9c407 Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001
From: John Engelman <john.r.engelman@gmail.com>
Date: Mon, 7 Nov 2016 06:14:04 -0600
Subject: [PATCH] Update docs on Cloudwatch. Set default period to 5m. (#2000)

---
 etc/telegraf.conf                       |  7 +++----
 plugins/inputs/cloudwatch/README.md     | 23 +++++++++++++++--------
 plugins/inputs/cloudwatch/cloudwatch.go | 13 ++++++++++---
 3 files changed, 28 insertions(+), 15 deletions(-)

diff --git a/etc/telegraf.conf b/etc/telegraf.conf
index b999713a7..8ebf0a7a7 100644
--- a/etc/telegraf.conf
+++ b/etc/telegraf.conf
@@ -641,14 +641,14 @@
 #   #shared_credential_file = ""
 #
 #   ## Requested CloudWatch aggregation Period (required - must be a multiple of 60s)
-#   period = "1m"
+#   period = "5m"
 #
 #   ## Collection Delay (required - must account for metrics availability via CloudWatch API)
-#   delay = "1m"
+#   delay = "5m"
 #
 #   ## Recomended: use metric 'interval' that is a multiple of 'period' to avoid
 #   ## gaps or overlap in pulled data
-#   interval = "1m"
+#   interval = "5m"
 #
 #   ## Configure the TTL for the internal cache of metrics.
 #   ## Defaults to 1 hr if not specified
@@ -1979,4 +1979,3 @@
 #
 #   [inputs.webhooks.rollbar]
 #     path = "/rollbar"
-
diff --git a/plugins/inputs/cloudwatch/README.md b/plugins/inputs/cloudwatch/README.md
index ca7145c30..643e18c3b 100644
--- a/plugins/inputs/cloudwatch/README.md
+++ b/plugins/inputs/cloudwatch/README.md
@@ -20,16 +20,23 @@ API endpoint. In the following order the plugin will attempt to authenticate.
   ## Amazon Region (required)
   region = "us-east-1"
 
+  # The minimum period for Cloudwatch metrics is 1 minute (60s). However not all
+  # metrics are made available to the 1 minute period. Some are collected at
+  # 3 minute and 5 minutes intervals. See https://aws.amazon.com/cloudwatch/faqs/#monitoring.
+  # Note that if a period is configured that is smaller than the minimum for a
+  # particular metric, that metric will not be returned by the Cloudwatch API
+  # and will not be collected by Telegraf.
+  #
   ## Requested CloudWatch aggregation Period (required - must be a multiple of 60s)
-  period = "1m"
+  period = "5m"
 
   ## Collection Delay (required - must account for metrics availability via CloudWatch API)
-  delay = "1m"
+  delay = "5m"
 
   ## Override global run interval (optional - defaults to global interval)
   ## Recomended: use metric 'interval' that is a multiple of 'period' to avoid
   ## gaps or overlap in pulled data
-  interval = "1m"
+  interval = "5m"
 
   ## Metric Statistic Namespace (required)
   namespace = "AWS/ELB"
@@ -71,16 +78,16 @@ wildcard dimension is ignored.
 Example:
 ```
 [[inputs.cloudwatch.metrics]]
-  names = ['Latency']
+  names = ["Latency"]
 
   ## Dimension filters for Metric (optional)
   [[inputs.cloudwatch.metrics.dimensions]]
-    name = 'LoadBalancerName'
-    value = 'p-example'
+    name = "LoadBalancerName"
+    value = "p-example"
 
   [[inputs.cloudwatch.metrics.dimensions]]
-    name = 'AvailabilityZone'
-    value = '*'
+    name = "AvailabilityZone"
+    value = "*"
 ```
 
 If the following ELBs are available:
diff --git a/plugins/inputs/cloudwatch/cloudwatch.go b/plugins/inputs/cloudwatch/cloudwatch.go
index c3dbda05b..bc8de313e 100644
--- a/plugins/inputs/cloudwatch/cloudwatch.go
+++ b/plugins/inputs/cloudwatch/cloudwatch.go
@@ -80,15 +80,22 @@ func (c *CloudWatch) SampleConfig() string {
   #profile = ""
   #shared_credential_file = ""
 
+  # The minimum period for Cloudwatch metrics is 1 minute (60s). However not all
+  # metrics are made available to the 1 minute period. Some are collected at
+  # 3 minute and 5 minutes intervals. See https://aws.amazon.com/cloudwatch/faqs/#monitoring.
+  # Note that if a period is configured that is smaller than the minimum for a
+  # particular metric, that metric will not be returned by the Cloudwatch API
+  # and will not be collected by Telegraf.
+  #
   ## Requested CloudWatch aggregation Period (required - must be a multiple of 60s)
-  period = "1m"
+  period = "5m"
 
   ## Collection Delay (required - must account for metrics availability via CloudWatch API)
-  delay = "1m"
+  delay = "5m"
 
   ## Recomended: use metric 'interval' that is a multiple of 'period' to avoid
   ## gaps or overlap in pulled data
-  interval = "1m"
+  interval = "5m"
 
   ## Configure the TTL for the internal cache of metrics.
   ## Defaults to 1 hr if not specified