Asking Questions
Ask AlertD about your AWS infrastructure using plain English. No scripts, no CLI — just type what you want to know.
How It Works
- Type your question in the prompt bar
- AlertD selects the right agent and builds an execution plan
- The plan queries your data — from ingested resources or live AWS APIs
- Results come back as structured tables and AI-generated insights
Every step is visible and inspectable in the UI.
Example Questions
Resource Discovery
- “What are my S3 buckets?”
- “List all EC2 instances in us-west-2”
- “Show me everything tagged with ‘production’”
- “What RDS databases are running MySQL?”
Performance & Metrics
- “What are my slowest EC2 instances?”
- “Show me RDS instances with high CPU”
- “Which instances have CPU above 80%?”
- “What’s the replication lag on my Aurora clusters?”
Cost Optimization
- “Which EBS volumes are unattached?”
- “List idle EC2 instances”
- “Which instances could move to smaller instance types?”
Security & Compliance
- “Are any S3 buckets public?”
- “Show me unencrypted EBS volumes”
- “Which security groups allow 0.0.0.0/0 access?”
- “Are all RDS instances backed up?”
Troubleshooting
- “Why is my RDS instance slow?”
- “Show me network activity for instance i-abc123”
- “What changed in the last 24 hours?”
Tips for Better Results
Be specific about scope — Include regions, service types, or metric names to get faster, more focused answers.
“Show me EC2 instances with CPUUtilization below 20% in us-west-2”
Ask one thing at a time — Separate questions get better results than multi-part prompts.
Use yes/no framing for compliance — “Are there any unencrypted EBS volumes?” gives clear, actionable answers.
Request groupings — “Group S3 buckets by region” or “Show EC2 instances by instance type” for better overviews.
What AlertD Understands
| Category | Examples |
|---|---|
| Services | EC2, S3, RDS, EBS, IAM, VPC, Lambda, Aurora, CloudWatch |
| Identifiers | Instance IDs (i-abc123), bucket names, volume IDs, security group IDs |
| Metrics | CPUUtilization, NetworkIn/Out, DiskReadOps, DatabaseConnections, ReplicationLag |
| Comparisons | above, below, greater than, less than, more than |
Limitations
No write access — AlertD is read-only by design. Ask for the list, then take action via the AWS console.
One topic per question — Multi-part questions (“list EC2 and also show S3 and tell me about RDS lag”) produce worse results. Ask them separately.
Avoid overly broad prompts — “Tell me everything about my infrastructure” creates massive plans. Be specific about what you need.
Next Steps
- AWS Queries – Comprehensive examples for every AWS service
- Analyzing Results – Deep dive on interpreting specific result types