---
title: Amazon SQS monitoring integration
source: https://docs.newrelic.com/docs/infrastructure/amazon-integrations/aws-integrations-list/amazon-sqs-monitoring-integration
---

New Relic integrates with Amazon Web Services (AWS) for reporting your [Amazon Simple Queue Service (SQS)](https://aws.amazon.com/sqs/) metrics and other data to New Relic.

This document explains how to activate the integration, and describes the data reported.

## Features [#features]

Amazon SQS provides hosted queues for storing messages in transit. New Relic's SQS integration reports queue-related data such as the count of messages delivered, delayed, and received, message size, and other [metrics](#metrics). SQS data is available in pre-built dashboards and you can also create [custom queries and charts](https://docs.newrelic.com/docs/infrastructure/integrations-getting-started/getting-started/use-integration-data-new-relic-insights). You can also create alert conditions to notify you of changes in SQS data.

## Activate integration [#activate]

This integration is available through CloudWatch Metric Streams.

To enable this integration, see how to [connect AWS services to New Relic via CloudWatch Metric Streams](https://docs.newrelic.com/docs/infrastructure/amazon-integrations/connect/aws-metric-stream-setup/).

### Activate using the legacy API Polling integration [#polling]

To enable this integration using our legacy polling integration, see how to enable the [AWS API Polling integration](https://docs.newrelic.com/docs/infrastructure/amazon-integrations/connect/connect-aws-new-relic-infrastructure-monitoring/).

> #### 💡 TIP
>
> You can change the polling frequency and filter data using [configuration options](https://docs.newrelic.com/docs/integrations/new-relic-integrations/getting-started/configure-polling-frequency-data-collection-cloud-integrations).
>
> Default [polling](https://docs.newrelic.com/docs/infrastructure/amazon-integrations/aws-integrations-list/aws-polling-intervals-infrastructure-integrations) information for the Amazon SQS integration:
>
> -   New Relic polling interval: 5 minutes
> -   AWS CloudWatch data interval: 1 minute

## Find and use data [#find-data]

To find your integration data, go to **[one.newrelic.com > All capabilities](https://one.newrelic.com/all-capabilities) > Infrastructure > AWS** and select one of the SQS integration links.

You can [query and explore your data](https://docs.newrelic.com/docs/using-new-relic/data/understand-data/query-new-relic-data) using the `QueueSample` [event type](https://docs.newrelic.com/docs/data-apis/understand-data/new-relic-data-types/#event-data), with a `provider` value of `SqsQueue`.

For more on how to use your data, see [Understand integration data](https://docs.newrelic.com/docs/infrastructure/integrations/find-use-infrastructure-integration-data).

## Metric data [#metrics]

This integration collects the following Amazon SQS metrics. For full metric descriptions, see [Amazon's SQS documentation](http://docs.aws.amazon.com/AmazonCloudWatch/latest/monitoring/sqs-metricscollected.html).

| Name                                    | Description                                                                                                                                                                                                                       |
| --------------------------------------- | --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
| `approximateAgeOfOldestMessage`         | The approximate age of the oldest non-deleted message in the queue, in seconds. For dead letter queues, this value is the longest time that a message has been in the queue.                                                      |
| `approximateNumberOfMessagesDelayed`    | The approximate number of messages in the queue that are delayed and not available for reading immediately. This can happen when the queue is configured as a delay queue or when a message has been sent with a delay parameter. |
| `approximateNumberOfMessagesNotVisible` | The approximate number of messages that are "in flight." Messages are considered in flight if they have been sent to a client but have not yet been deleted or have not yet reached the end of their visibility window.           |
| `ApproximateNumberOfMessagesVisible`    | The approximate number of messages available for retrieval from the queue.                                                                                                                                                        |
| `numberOfEmptyReceives`                 | The number of `ReceiveMessage` API calls that did not return a message.                                                                                                                                                           |
| `numberOfMessagesDeleted`               | The number of messages deleted from the queue.                                                                                                                                                                                    |
| `numberOfMessagesReceived`              | The number of messages returned by calls to the `ReceiveMessage` API action.                                                                                                                                                      |
| `numberOfMessagesSent`                  | The number of messages added to a queue.                                                                                                                                                                                          |
| `sentMessagesSize`                      | The size in bytes of messages added to a queue.                                                                                                                                                                                   |

### Create alerts

You can set up alerts to notify you if there are any changes. For example, you can set up an alert to notify relevant parties of critical or fatal errors.

Learn more about [creating alerts here](https://docs.newrelic.com/docs/alerts-applied-intelligence/new-relic-alerts/get-started/your-first-nrql-condition/).