Amazon RDS Strange metrics CPU Credit Balance

Question

We have RDS PostgreSQL instance with type db.t2.small . And we have some strange moment with cpu credit balance metrics . CPU Credit Usage not growing but balance is down to zero . Anybody know in what could be problem? (RDS instance working fine without any problems).

Answer 1

I am seeing the same behavior with my T2-micro free tier RDS instance. My hypothesis right now is that the service window is when the instance is getting rebooted or hot swapped, resulting in a new instance with the default baseline number of credits. This makes Saturday night more appealing than Sunday night in order to be sure by the next business day credits re-accumulate.

Answer 2

From the documentation, it looks like CPU credits expire 24 hours after being earned.

CPUCreditUsage

[T2 instances] The number of CPU credits consumed by the instance. One CPU credit equals one vCPU running at 100% utilization for one minute or an equivalent combination of vCPUs, utilization, and time (for example, one vCPU running at 50% utilization for two minutes or two vCPUs running at 25% utilization for two minutes).

CPU credit metrics are available only at a 5 minute frequency. If you specify a period greater than five minutes, use the Sum statistic instead of the Average statistic.

Units: Count

CPUCreditBalance

[T2 instances] The number of CPU credits available for the instance to burst beyond its base CPU utilization. Credits are stored in the credit balance after they are earned and removed from the credit balance after they expire. Credits expire 24 hours after they are earned.

CPU credit metrics are available only at a 5 minute frequency.

Units: Count

https://docs.aws.amazon.com/AmazonCloudWatch/latest/monitoring/rds-metricscollected.html