AWS Trusted Advisor and Health Dashboards
Learn how Trusted Advisor inspects your AWS environment across five categories, and how Health Dashboards keep you informed about AWS operational issues.
Learning outcomes
By the end of this lesson, you will be able to:
- Name the five categories of AWS Trusted Advisor checks.
- Explain which checks are free vs paid.
- Distinguish the Personal Health Dashboard from the Service Health Dashboard.
- Identify when to use Trusted Advisor vs Health Dashboards.
AWS Trusted Advisor
Trusted Advisor is an automated inspection tool that evaluates your AWS environment and provides recommendations across five categories:
The five categories
| Category | What it checks | Example recommendation |
|---|---|---|
| Cost Optimization | Underutilized or idle resources | "You have 3 idle EC2 instances costing $150/month" |
| Performance | Resources that could perform better | "This EBS volume type could be upgraded for better throughput" |
| Security | Security gaps and vulnerabilities | "MFA is not enabled on your root account" |
| Fault Tolerance | Resilience and backup gaps | "This RDS instance does not have Multi-AZ enabled" |
| Service Limits | Approaching AWS service quotas | "You are using 80% of your VPC limit in us-east-1" |
Tip
Memory aid for the five categories: Cost, Performance, Security, Fault tolerance, Service limits — think "CPS-FS" or simply remember "Trusted Advisor checks if your account is cheap, fast, safe, resilient, and within limits."
Free vs paid checks
Not all Trusted Advisor checks are available on every support plan:
| Support Plan | Available checks |
|---|---|
| Basic / Developer | 7 core checks (mostly security: root MFA, S3 bucket permissions, security groups, IAM use, etc.) + service limit checks |
| Business / Enterprise | All checks across all five categories, plus API access and CloudWatch integration |
Note
The 7 free core checks focus on foundational security. To get cost optimization, performance, and fault tolerance recommendations, you need a Business or Enterprise support plan.
AWS Personal Health Dashboard
The Personal Health Dashboard (now part of AWS Health) provides account-specific notifications about AWS events that may affect your resources.
What it shows:
- Scheduled maintenance on EC2 instances in your account
- Service degradations affecting your specific resources
- Proactive notifications before events happen
- Recommended remediation actions
Key point: It shows issues relevant to your account — not global AWS status.
AWS Service Health Dashboard
The Service Health Dashboard shows the global operational status of all AWS services across all Regions. It is public and available to everyone.
What it shows:
- Current status of every AWS service in every Region
- Historical data on past service disruptions
- RSS feeds for service status updates
Key point: It shows the overall health of AWS — not specific to your account.
Personal Health Dashboard vs Service Health Dashboard
| Feature | Personal Health Dashboard | Service Health Dashboard |
|---|---|---|
| Scope | Your account and resources only | All AWS services globally |
| Personalized | Yes — shows events affecting your specific resources | No — shows global status for everyone |
| Proactive alerts | Yes — warns you before scheduled events | No — shows current and historical status |
| Access | Requires AWS account login | Public — anyone can view it |
| Best for | "Is anything happening to my resources?" | "Is AWS having a global outage?" |
Warning
Common exam trap: Don't confuse the two dashboards. "My EC2 instance has scheduled maintenance" → Personal Health Dashboard. "Is S3 down worldwide?" → Service Health Dashboard.
AWS Compute Optimizer
While Trusted Advisor provides broad best-practice checks, AWS Compute Optimizer offers specialized, ML-driven right-sizing recommendations for your compute resources.
Trusted Advisor
Broad checks across cost, performance, security, fault tolerance, and limits - general recommendations
Compute Optimizer
ML-powered analysis of CloudWatch metrics providing specific right-sizing recommendations for compute resources
What Compute Optimizer analyzes:
- CloudWatch metrics from 14-93 day lookback periods (configurable)
- EC2 instance CPU, memory, and I/O utilization patterns
- EBS volume read/write patterns and IOPS utilization
- Lambda function memory and duration patterns
- ECS service CPU and memory utilization
Types of recommendations:
| Issue Type | What Compute Optimizer Identifies | Example Recommendation |
|---|---|---|
| Over-provisioned | Resources with low utilization that can be downsized | "Switch from m5.large to m5.medium - save $35/month" |
| Under-provisioned | Resources hitting limits that need upsizing | "Upgrade from t3.small to t3.medium to resolve CPU throttling" |
| Idle resources | Resources with no utilization for extended periods | "Consider terminating this idle EC2 instance" |
| Graviton migration | Opportunities to use ARM-based processors for better price/performance | "Migrate from m5.large to m6g.large - 20% lower cost, better performance" |
Key difference:
- Trusted Advisor says: "You have 3 idle EC2 instances" (broad check)
- Compute Optimizer says: "Reduce m5.xlarge to m5.large based on 30-day CPU average of 12%" (specific, metric-driven)
Tip
Compute Optimizer is free to enable and use. After opt-in, it analyzes your CloudWatch metrics and provides recommendations within 24 hours. You only pay for the CloudWatch metrics it uses.
Trusted Advisor vs Health Dashboards vs Compute Optimizer
These serve different purposes:
| Tool | Purpose |
|---|---|
| Trusted Advisor | Inspects your account and recommends improvements (cost, performance, security, fault tolerance, limits) |
| Compute Optimizer | ML-driven right-sizing recommendations for EC2, EBS, Lambda, ECS |
| Personal Health Dashboard | Alerts you about AWS events affecting your specific resources |
| Service Health Dashboard | Shows the global operational status of AWS services |
Think of it this way:
- Trusted Advisor = "Here is what you could improve"
- Compute Optimizer = "Here is exactly which instance type to use based on metrics"
- Personal Health Dashboard = "Here is what AWS events affect you"
- Service Health Dashboard = "Here is how AWS is doing globally"
AWS Self-Service Technical Resources
Beyond documentation, AWS provides three curated knowledge resources for different types of technical questions.
AWS re:Post
Meaning
Community-driven Q&A platform that replaced AWS Forums, providing crowd-sourced, expert-reviewed answers to technical questions
Examples
Searching how others solved a specific Lambda timeout error or API Gateway configuration issue
When it's ideal: Questions escalated to AWS Support engineers if community doesn't answer; free to use with AWS account
AWS Knowledge Center
Meaning
Curated collection of AWS Official troubleshooting articles and step-by-step guides, now hosted within re:Post
Examples
Step-by-step procedure for reactivating a suspended account or troubleshooting EC2 connection issues
When it's ideal: Articles carry 'AWS Official' badge indicating verified accuracy by AWS teams
AWS Prescriptive Guidance
Meaning
Best-practice patterns and implementation guides from AWS experts to accelerate cloud adoption and modernization
Examples
Migration strategies for on-premises databases, serverless architecture patterns, Well-Architected implementation guides
When it's ideal: Enterprise-scale guidance for architects, managers, and technical leads
When to use each resource:
| Resource | Best For | Type of Content |
|---|---|---|
| re:Post | Quick answers, community perspectives, error troubleshooting | Q&A format with multiple community solutions |
| Knowledge Center | Verified procedural steps for common tasks | Step-by-step AWS Official articles |
| Prescriptive Guidance | Architecture decisions, migration planning, best practices | Implementation guides and patterns |
How they relate:
- Knowledge Center articles now live within re:Post (migrated 2023)
- re:Post contains both community Q&A and official AWS articles
- Prescriptive Guidance is separate — it's structured guidance rather than Q&A
Tip
Use the Knowledge Center when you need an authoritative, step-by-step answer from AWS. Use re:Post Q&A when you want to see how other developers solved similar problems or when your issue isn't covered by official articles.