Exam relevance: Domain 3 (25%). Service Quotas is the centralized way to view and request quota increases. Know how to monitor quotas proactively and integrate with CloudWatch.
1. Overview
AWS Service Quotas provides a central location to view and manage AWS service quotas (formerly called limits) across all services and regions. It enables proactive quota management before hitting limits.
2. Key Concepts
| Concept | Description |
|---|---|
| Quota | Maximum value for a resource or operation (e.g., 5 VPCs per region) |
| Default quota | AWS-defined starting value |
| Applied quota | Current quota for your account (may be higher than default after increase) |
| Adjustable quota | Can be increased via request |
| Non-adjustable quota | Hard limit — cannot be increased |
3. Quota Increase Requests
- Submit increase requests directly from Service Quotas console
- Requests go to AWS Support automatically
- Track request status in Service Quotas console
- Some quotas are auto-approved; others require manual review
# Request quota increase via CLI
aws service-quotas request-service-quota-increase \
--service-code ec2 \
--quota-code L-1216C47A \
--desired-value 1004. CloudWatch Integration
Monitor quota utilization proactively:
- Service Quotas publishes utilization metrics to CloudWatch for supported services
- Create CloudWatch alarms when utilization exceeds a threshold (e.g., 80%)
- Alert before hitting the limit — not after
# Create alarm for EC2 instance quota utilization
aws cloudwatch put-metric-alarm \
--alarm-name "EC2-vCPU-Quota-Warning" \
--namespace "AWS/Usage" \
--metric-name "ResourceCount" \
--dimensions Name=Service,Value=EC2 Name=Resource,Value=vCPU \
--statistic Maximum \
--period 300 \
--threshold 80 \
--comparison-operator GreaterThanThreshold \
--alarm-actions arn:aws:sns:us-east-1:123456789012:quota-alerts5. Quota Templates (Organizations)
- Define quota increase requests as templates
- Apply templates to new accounts automatically when they join the organization
- Ensures new accounts start with appropriate quotas for your workloads
6. Common Quotas to Monitor
| Service | Quota | Default |
|---|---|---|
| EC2 | Running On-Demand Standard instances (vCPUs) | 32–1152 vCPUs (varies) |
| VPC | VPCs per region | 5 |
| Lambda | Concurrent executions | 1,000 |
| RDS | DB instances per region | 40 |
| ELB | Load balancers per region | 50 |
| IAM | Roles per account | 1,000 |
Always verify current defaults — they change over time.
7. Exam Scenarios
Scenario 1: A company is launching a new product and expects to need 500 EC2 instances in a region where the default limit is 32 vCPUs. What should they do proactively?
Use Service Quotas to request an increase for EC2 On-Demand vCPUs well before the launch. Submit the request with justification. Monitor the request status. Set a CloudWatch alarm on the quota utilization metric to alert if approaching the new limit.
Scenario 2: A company wants all new AWS accounts to automatically have higher Lambda concurrency limits. What is the solution?
Create a quota template in Service Quotas for Lambda concurrent executions. Apply the template to the organization. New accounts joining the organization automatically have the quota increase request submitted.
8. Exam Tips
- Service Quotas = proactive quota management — don’t wait for
LimitExceedederrors - CloudWatch alarms on quota utilization = alert at 80% before hitting 100%
- Quota templates = automatically apply quota increases to new accounts in the organization
- Some quotas are per region, some are per account — check the scope
- Trusted Advisor also shows service limit warnings — complementary to Service Quotas
- Request increases well in advance — some require manual AWS review and take days