There are two Python programs here for monitoring systems with custom
parameters in CloudWatch:

      1. monitor_server - monitor for memory and disk usage 
      2. website_watchdog - monitor HTTP content 

To prepare for these to work:
   1. set up AWS CloudWatch
   2. Install Python boto, e.g. yum install python27-boto


Monitor Server Program

This program will:
     - Run on a Linux server, preferably AWS Linux AMI
     - Written in Python using AWS Boto library
     - Get the RAM usage
     - Get the swap usage
     - Get the disk usage for a variable number of attached storage devices
     - Store each of these values into CloudWatch
     - Use a simple configuration file
     - Optionally run using the EC2 role instead of AWS access ID and secret key

To run this program:
   1. Copy config.ini.template to config.ini
   2. Add a custom namespace for the server you are monitoring
   3. If not using an EC2 role, add the access ID and secret key
   4. Modify the disk metrics for each of the disks to monitor
   5. Run on the server to test
   6. Once working, run this in a cron job



Website Watchdog

This tiny program is a watchdog for websites that will post the
results to AWS CloudWatch for monitoring and alarms.  This assumes
the website is available and containing something constant that can be
matched.

To run this watchdog program you'll need to:
    - Get a list of your servers IDs
    - For each server to monitor , find a stable URL and grab a small snippet of that page
    - Configure each of the constant elements below
    - Run the program and see if it is posting correctly to CloudWatch
    - Monitor the log file if needed
       (e.g. tail -f /var/log/httpd/website_watchdog.log)
    - If all is good, set up any alarms in CloudWatch for these custom metrics