Monitoring server health with Amazon GameLift Servers

This article explains how to monitor game server health using Amazon GameLift Servers telemetry metrics and Amazon Managed Grafana dashboards to diagnose performance issues.

• GameLift telemetry captures CPU, memory, network, tick rate, and custom metrics across process/container/host/fleet levels
• Pre-built Grafana dashboards enable quick identification of crashes, memory leaks, and performance bottlenecks
• Memory leak example: dashboard showed memory spike before crash, pinpointing problematic game session
• High CPU usage example: identified top CPU-consuming sessions to guide log investigation
• Container support provides per-container metric breakdown for isolated troubleshooting
• Custom metrics track game-specific health: combat balance, progression blockers, economy health, AI pathfinding
• Proactive alerting on system and custom metric thresholds catches regressions before player impact

Server-side observability through GameLift telemetry and Grafana dashboards enables rapid diagnosis of game server issues beyond latency optimization alone.