CloudWatch doesn't provide an Export utility - this does. awscwxls creates spreadsheets based on generic sets of Namespace/Dimension/Metric/Statistic specifications. As long as AWS continues to follow the Namespace/Dimension/Metric/Statistic pattern, awscwxls should work for existing and future Namespaces (Services). Each set of specifications is stored in a properties file, so each properties file can be configured for a specific set of AWS Services and resources. Take a look at run/properties/template.properties for a complete example.

To run:

• Prereqs
  • Java 1.7
  • AWS account, .aws/credentials file containing your keys
  • AWS account must have CloudWatch IAM permission
• Copy the run/ directory to the local file system
• Review properties/first.properties. This is a very simple properties file that will extract EC2 statistics for a single instance
• Update properties/first.properties based on the TODO comments in the file
• Run
  • Linux: ./runcwxls properties/first.properties
  • Windows: runcwxls properties/first.properties
• Review the spreadsheet
• Advanced
  • Review properties/template.properties. This is an example of collecting stats from multiple Namespace/Dimension/Metric/Statistic combinations

Java Project Overview

• Maven project in Eclipse, but should easily port to other IDE's
• Uses Apache POI to create the spreadsheets. Take a look at BaseXls.java, encapsulates most of the POI complexity, MetricSpreadsheet.java creates the xls.
• Entry point: ExtractSpreadsheet.main()
• ExtractMetrics.java does most of the heavy lifting - connecting to CW and getting the metrics/statistics

Thanks to Alois Reitbauer, the examples on his blog accelerated my understanding of the CW API.