Installs, configures, and troubleshoots Network Flow Monitor agents on EC2 instances to monitor network path health. Covers agent installation, IAM permissions, monitoring network paths, and troubleshooting agents reporting no metrics, HTTP 403 errors, or connectivity failures.
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AWS Network Monitoring
Overview
Domain expertise for installing and configuring Amazon CloudWatch Network Flow
Monitor agents on EC2 instances. Covers IAM permission setup, agent
installation via SSM Distributor or command-line install, agent activation,
verification, and troubleshooting.
Network Flow Monitor agents are lightweight software that publish performance
metrics (latency, packet loss) to the Network Flow Monitor backend, enabling
monitoring of network path health between workloads.
Works best with the AWS MCP server — enables running SSM commands, attaching IAM policies, and validating agent status directly. All guidance also works with standard AWS CLI access.
Error → cause → fix for Network Flow Monitor agent issues (HTTP 403, missing metrics, connectivity)
Supported versions
For supported Linux distributions, kernel versions, and architectures, see the
AWS documentation.
Windows is not supported.
Security Considerations
Least-privilege IAM: Attach only CloudWatchNetworkFlowMonitorAgentPublishPolicy for publishing metrics and AmazonSSMManagedInstanceCore for SSM management. Do not use *FullAccess policies.
Private subnets: When the instance is in a private subnet, prefer VPC endpoints for SSM (com.amazonaws.<region>.ssm, .ssmmessages, .ec2messages) over a NAT gateway to keep traffic on the AWS network.
Credential storage: Never embed AWS credentials on the instance; the publish policy MUST be attached to the instance role, not configured as static keys.
Audit trail: Ensure CloudTrail is enabled in the account so SSM SendCommand invocations and IAM AttachRolePolicy actions performed during agent setup are logged for security investigations.
