Healthdashboard Diagnostics

Health Dashboard Diagnostics

When to use

Any Health Dashboard investigation where the console alone is insufficient — event interpretation, affected resource identification, scheduled change management, EventBridge integration, organizational health, Health API access, or incident response coordination.

Investigation workflow

Step 1 — Collect and triage

aws health describe-events --filter '{"eventStatusCodes":["open","upcoming"]}' --region us-east-1
aws health describe-event-details --event-arns <event-arn> --region us-east-1
aws health describe-affected-entities --filter '{"eventArns":["<event-arn>"]}' --region us-east-1
aws health describe-event-types --filter '{"eventTypeCategories":["scheduledChange"]}' --region us-east-1

Step 2 — Domain deep dive

aws health describe-events-for-organization --filter '{"eventStatusCodes":["open"]}' --region us-east-1
aws health describe-affected-accounts-for-organization --event-arn <event-arn> --region us-east-1
aws events list-rules --name-prefix Health --region us-east-1
aws health describe-event-aggregates --aggregate-field eventTypeCategory --filter '{"eventStatusCodes":["open"]}' --region us-east-1

Read references/guardrails.md before concluding on any Health Dashboard issue.

Tool quick reference

Gotchas: Health Dashboard

• The Health API is only available in us-east-1 (and us-gov-west-1 for GovCloud). All API calls must target us-east-1.
• Health API requires Business or Enterprise Support plan. Basic and Developer plans can only use the console.
• Events have three categories: issue (service disruption), accountNotification (account-specific), and scheduledChange (planned maintenance).
• Organizational health events require Organizations with Health enabled as a trusted service.
• Health events are retained for 90 days. Events older than 90 days are not accessible via API.
• Scheduled changes include a start time and may include an end time. Not all scheduled changes have a fixed end time.
• EventBridge health events are published in us-east-1 for global events and in the affected region for regional events.
• Affected entities may not be immediately available when an event is first published. They are populated as AWS identifies impacted resources.
• Public events (service-wide) do not list specific affected entities. Only account-specific events list affected resources.
• Health Dashboard shows both public (service-wide) and account-specific events. Public events affect all customers in a region.

Anti-hallucination rules

1. Always cite specific event ARNs, event details, affected entities, or event status as evidence.
2. Health API requires Business/Enterprise Support. Never suggest API calls for Basic/Developer plans.
3. The API endpoint is us-east-1 only. Never suggest using other regions for Health API calls.
4. Public events do not list specific affected entities. Never claim you can identify specific resources for public events.
5. Events are retained for 90 days only. Never suggest querying events older than 90 days.
6. Spend no more than 2 minutes on any single hypothesis. Pivot if inconclusive.

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