Runbook: RDSCPUUtilization Alert

Alert Details

  • Alert Name: RDSCPUUtilization
  • Expression: rds_cpu_usage_percent_average{dbidentifier!~".*copy.*", %(clusterSelector)s} > 80

Description

This alert is triggered when the RDS instance has high CPU usage.

Possible Causes

  • high load

Troubleshooting Steps

1. Open RDS Performance Insights to identify queries consuming the server’s CPU.

2. Check queries that are currently running on the CPU

PostgreSQL SELECT pid, usename, datname, application_name, now() - query_start duration, left(query, 60) FROM pg_stat_activity WHERE state = 'active' AND wait_event_type IS NULL AND wait_event IS NULL ORDER BY duration desc;

3. Kill CPU-intensive SQL queries

4. Reduce the number of database connections

5. Check CPU and disk saturation. You may need to upscale the RDS instance