Alerts notify you when something in one of your cloud services needs attention. In an observability context, alerts are generated when defined conditions are met, such as when a metric crosses a configured threshold.

Alerts turn raw monitoring data into actionable information by notifying you when a service starts operating outside of expected patterns. Early detection of unusual or important changes in behavior allows you to investigate and resolve issues before they impact users or other parts of your system.

You can create and manage alerts using Cloud Manager or the Linode API.

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Supported services

Alerts are currently in limited availability for Databases, NodeBalancers, Object Storage, and Logs. Support for additional services is planned for future releases.

How alerts work

Alerts evaluate metrics for monitored entities at regular intervals using predefined or user-defined criteria. Each alert is evaluated independently for each entity to determine whether the alert condition is met. When the condition is met for the specified evaluation period, the alert is triggered and a notification is sent through the configured notification channel.

Evaluation logic helps ensure alerts surface meaningful changes in behavior rather than short-lived metric fluctuations.

Alert types

Akamai Cloud Pulse provides two complementary alert types designed to work together:

System alerts are predefined and monitor common service health conditions.

User alerts are defined by you and allow you to tailor alerting to your specific operational needs.

Used together, system alerts establish a foundation for service health monitoring, while user alerts allow you to build on that foundation as needed.

For more information about alert types, evaluation criteria, and alert parameters, see Alert types and parameters.

Pricing and availability

Metrics are currently available for the Databases service in all core regions at no additional cost.

Limits and considerations

The following limits apply to alerts:

• Metrics per alert: An alert can evaluate up to five metrics.
• Dimension filters per alert: An alert definition can include up to five optional dimension filters.
• Entities per alert: An alert can target up to 100 entities.
• User alerts per account: Up to 10 user alerts can be created per account.
• Notification channels per alert: An alert can be associated with up to five notification channels.
• Recipients per channel: Up to 10 recipients can be added to a user-created notification channel.

To request an increase to the number of user alerts you can create, contact Support.

Next steps

• Learn about alert types and parameters
• Create your first user alert