Sample script to monitor Load Average on CloudWatch on AWS EC2

#!/usr/bin/python
# coding: utf-8
import os
import commands
import boto.ec2.cloudwatch

AWS_ACCESS_KEY = '********'
AWS_SECRET_ACCESS_KEY = '********'
AWS_REGION_NAME = '********'


def main():
    instance_id = commands.getoutput("wget -q -O - http://169.254.169.254/latest/meta-data/instance-id")
    load_averages = os.getloadavg()

    cloud_watch = boto.ec2.cloudwatch.connect_to_region(
        aws_access_key_id=AWS_ACCESS_KEY ,
        aws_secret_access_key=AWS_SECRET_ACCESS_KEY,
        region_name=AWS_REGION_NAME,
    )

    cloud_watch.put_metric_data(
        namespace='LoadAverage',
        name='LoadAverage',
        value=float(load_averages[0]),
        dimensions={
            'InstanceId': instance_id,
        }
    )

if __name__ == '__main__':
    main()