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Amazon CloudWatch

What is it​

A monitoring and observability service for AWS resources and applications, as well as on-premises applications.

What it's for​

Collect and monitor metrics, collect and monitor log files, and configure alarms to notify about changes in resource performance or availability.

Use cases​

  • Monitoring performance of EC2 instances, RDS databases, Lambda functions, etc.
  • Collection and analysis of application and service logs
  • Creation of custom dashboards to visualize metrics
  • Configuration of alarms to notify about metric thresholds (e.g., CPU usage, application errors)
  • Automation of actions in response to events (e.g., scaling instances, restarting services)

Key points​

  • Metrics: Collects metrics from AWS resources and custom applications
  • Logs: Collects, monitors, and stores application and service logs
  • Alarms: Allows configuring alarms based on metric thresholds
  • Events: Allows reacting to AWS resource and application events
  • Dashboards: Create custom dashboards to visualize monitoring data
  • Fully managed: AWS handles the monitoring infrastructure

Comparison​

  • Amazon CloudWatch: Offers a native and fully managed monitoring solution for the AWS ecosystem, with deep integration with other services. Ideal for those seeking a simple and integrated solution to monitor their AWS resources.
  • Third-party tools (e.g., self-managed Grafana, Prometheus): Offer greater flexibility and customization, plus support for multi-cloud and on-premises environments. However, they require users to manage the monitoring infrastructure.