Cloud Setup
Connect AWS
Set up AWS access for dashboards, inventory, billing, alerts, recommendations, simulations, and actions.
AWS is the deepest CloudWatcher integration today.
What you need
- Permission to create or update an IAM role or deploy the provided CloudFormation stack.
- Cost Explorer or billing access if you want cost pages.
- CloudWatch and service read permissions for metrics and inventory.
- Extra write permissions only for alarms, simulations, live actions, or migration workflows.
Setup steps
- Open Settings > AWS.
- Copy the generated external ID and role instructions.
- Create the IAM role or deploy the provided stack in AWS.
- Paste the role details back into CloudWatcher.
- Save and wait for connected status.
- Open Dashboard and a known service page to confirm data.
What AWS unlocks
- Service dashboards, metrics, alerts, billing, recommendations, and cost savings.
- Live Infrastructure views and supported AWS actions.
- Simulation deployment, Terraform preview, and destroy workflows.
- AI Observability data from Bedrock where configured.
- Resize Migration for EC2-focused workflows.
AWS services and config fields
- EC2 Instance: configure instance type, count, region, AMI, key pair, instance name, admin username, VPC, subnet, and security group.
- S3 Bucket: configure bucket name, region, versioning, public access, lifecycle rule, and bucket policy.
- RDS Database: configure engine, engine version, instance class, Multi-AZ, storage size, storage type, database name, username, port, and public access.
- Lambda Function: configure runtime, handler, memory, timeout, function name, environment, and inline starter code.
- DynamoDB Table: configure table name, billing mode, hash key, hash key type, and region.
- API Gateway: configure API name, protocol type, endpoint type, and region.
- ECS Cluster: configure launch type, desired count, CPU, memory, app port, Fargate Spot, Service Connect, autoscaling, and sidecar options.
- EKS Cluster: configure cluster name, Kubernetes version, node count, instance type, app port, and region.
- ECR Registry: configure container registry settings for Docker image workflows.
- Elastic IP: reserve or attach static public IPv4 addressing for AWS resources.
- Security Group: configure inbound ports, private mode, and network access rules.
- Target Group: configure load-balancer target routing.
- EBS Volume: configure persistent block storage attached to compute workloads.
- VPC: configure VPC name, CIDR block, subnet CIDR, SSH, HTTP, HTTPS, private mode, and region.
- Elastic Load Balancer: configure load balancer name, port, protocol, and region.
- Auto Scaling Group: configure min size, max size, desired capacity, instance type, AMI, key name, instance name, admin username, and CPU target.
- CloudFront Distribution: configure CDN distribution settings for global delivery.
- GitHub Repository and Docker Hub: connect code or container sources for application bootstrap workflows.
AWS verification checklist
- Open Dashboard and verify account-level cards load.
- Open EC2 or another service dashboard in a region with known resources.
- Open Billing Metrics and confirm Cost Explorer data is available.
- Open Alerts and check whether CloudWatch alarms or default alarms appear.
- Open Recommendations and Cost Savings to confirm optimization data is available.
- Open Simulation, add an EC2 Instance or S3 Bucket, preview Terraform, and deploy only in a safe test account.
Need more help?
Keep moving with the right next guide
If your team still runs into setup issues, empty dashboards, billing delays, callback failures, or alerting problems, continue with troubleshooting before re-running the entire onboarding flow.