This article was published as a part of the Data Science Blogathon.
Introduction
Cloud computing has become an integral part of most organizations worldwide. Leading companies worldwide have opted for Amazon Web Services (AWS) as their Cloud provider as AWS are one the best and most cost-efficient cloud services. But since organizations use AWS for a lot of their work, they cannot manually track every resource and monitor their effectiveness. For this reason, AWS has provided a service called AWS CloudWatch that can be used to track resources and their logs and send alarms based on discrepancies found in the system to various services.
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You can keep an eye on the effectiveness and functionality of your AWS resources and applications with the aid of Amazon CloudWatch, an AWS tool. In reaction to events or schedules, CloudWatch starts communication with other services. CloudWatch will also combine logs from other services, notifications, and alarms from groups of services on a customized interface. Tracking resource and application performance based on the metrics you provide is the main purpose of CloudWatch. You can instruct CloudWatch to carry out a certain action when an alarm is triggered by setting the alarm for resources that exceed a particular metric. Sending a notification or calling a lambda function to carry out a task in response to the alarm could be the task.
AWS resources like Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) instances, Amazon Elastic Block Store (EBS) volumes, Elastic Load Balancing, and Amazon Relational Database Service (RDS) instances may all be monitored in real-time using CloudWatch. The application automatically gathers and provides measurements of CPU usage, latency, and request counts. Users can provide additional monitoring indicators, including memory use, transaction volumes, and error rates.
Through an application programming interface (API), command-line tools, one of the AWS software development kits, or the AWS Management Console, users can access CloudWatch functions. Users can view current statistics in graph form with the CloudWatch interface. Users can configure notification alarms to be issued when a monitored value exceeds a predetermined threshold.
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How Does Amazon CloudWatch Work?
Now that we know what AWS CloudWatch is let’s learn how it works.
The system first collects a service’s log and metrics data when it is mentioned in CloudWatch. The data is still being monitored and updated while it is being gathered. AWS will take action and try to address any issues if they are found while monitoring. It will assess and provide graphical content for better interpretation and future usage using all the obtained log and metric data.
Every AWS service connected to the user is instantly displayed on the CloudWatch page. Users can also design unique dashboards that aid in displaying metrics regarding apps. Additionally, they can be used to show a user-selected, customizable set of metrics.
The user can build alarms that assist in tracking the metrics and providing messages about their status. When a given condition is satisfied, or a threshold is achieved, these alerts can also be used to automatically make some adjustments to the AWS resources being monitored by the user.
System-wide visibility into resource usage, application performance, and the health of system operations is made possible with the aid of CloudWatch.
AWS CloudWatch Features
Users can gather and view monitoring information for AWS infrastructures using CloudWatch on a single platform. Specific functions for data collecting, monitoring, automated actions, analysis, compliance, and security are included in CloudWatch. Below are the features of AWS CloudWatch:
1. CloudWatch Logs:
With the help of this service, users can gather and store logs for customer-facing services and logs for certain AWS services like AWS CloudTrail, AWS Lambda, Amazon API Gateway, and Amazon Simple Notification Service as logs for custom software and on-premises assets. The log data can be quickly accessed and visualized with CloudWatch Logs Insights.
2. Metrics collection:
More than 70 distributed AWS apps’ default metrics can be gathered by users and seen in one location. Additionally, they can configure logs and get metrics from their apps or on-premises resources.
3. CloudWatch Logs insights:
An interactive log query tool that aids in log data visualization and analysis. The log insights tool aids in filtering and aggregating log data, whether for publishing to the CloudWatch dashboard or making time-series graphs to illustrate the data.
4. CloudWatch Alarms:
The CloudWatch Alarm continuously monitors the metrics for CloudWatch. An alarm is raised if the measure (or metrics) exceeds the predetermined or specified thresholds. The CloudWatch dashboard can also show the status of the alarm.
5. CloudWatch Lambda Insights:
This service gathers, aggregates, and keeps track of AWS Lambda logs, performance metrics, and disc, CPU, and memory data for each container.
6. Anomaly Detection:
In AWS systems, aberrant activity can be recognized using machine learning algorithms.
7. CloudWatch Events:
It selects for AWS resource state changes and is in charge of producing a nearly real-time stream of events delivered to processing destinations. Eventually, with the aid of these events, the targets are informed of the state changes.
8. Log analytics:
CloudWatch Logs data can be subject to advanced analytics without the requirement to set up new servers or install other software. Dashboards may import and export queries.
9. Integration with AWS IAM:
This facility offers a management console so administrators can manage which users and programs can access CloudWatch resources and data.
Benefits of AWS CloudWatch
For businesses employing AWS resources and apps, CloudWatch offers several advantages. These concern both the information that CloudWatch can offer and its user-friendly interface.
Below are some of the benefits of Amazon CloudWatch:
- Offers fundamental functions that are simple to use.
- Gives access to all AWS monitoring data in a single platform.
- Collects metrics for AWS environments efficiently.
- Boosts and improves the operational efficiency of on-premises and AWS resources.
- Allows for the alerting of anomalies found using Amazon SNS.
- Simple system integration using AWS EC2 instances.
- Ease of real-time processing of CloudWatch log data and ease of streaming log data to Amazon Elasticsearch.
- Gives consistency and dependability.
- Reveals information about connections and other system performance relationships.
- Integrates with additional AWS resources.
Challenges of AWS CloudWatch:
Even though there are a lot of benefits of Amazon CloudWatch, there are also a few challenges that come with it. Below are some of the challenges of Amazon CloudWatch:
· The RAM metrics from CloudWatch are not stored on EC2.
· It can only be integrated into AWS resources.
· Much more expensive than alternative log monitoring and third-party tools
· The CloudWatch dashboard does not provide the construction of discrete count histograms.
Use Cases of Amazon CloudWatch
Businesses effectively control the health of the AWS environment using the monitoring and events features of AWS CloudWatch. Below are some of the use cases of Amazon CloudWatch:
- Utilizing log analytics to enhance performance and assist in resolving operational difficulties.
- Watch over AWS apps either locally or in the cloud.
- Used as a dashboard as well as a logging tool.
- The AWS infrastructure should be tracked and troubleshot.
- Utilised to arrange the metrics for all AWS-deployed applications.
- System resource optimization.
AWS CloudWatch vs AWS CloudTrail
Your AWS account can be audited for governance, compliance, operational efficiency, and risk using the AWS CloudTrail. It continuously logs and keeps track of all the actions taken within your AWS account. It also gives you access to your AWS account’s event history, including data on who has used your AWS services. CloudTrail also performs remediation.
The below table shows the difference between CloudWatch and CloudTrail:
|
AWS CloudWatch |
AWS CloudTrail |
| It mostly focuses on events using AWS resources. | It mostly focuses on who uses AWS and what they do there. |
| It is an AWS resource and application monitoring service. | In the AWS account, it logs API activity. |
| You may track metrics and keep an eye on log files with CloudWatch. You can also set alarms for different occasions. | By logging AWS console operations such as who called, from which IP address, when, and the time of the call, CloudTrail gives users more insight into user activity. |
| The application logs are specifically recorded. | It offers details regarding what happened in your AWS account. |
| For extensive monitoring, it gives metrics data every 1 minute, and for simple monitoring, it is every 5 minutes. | After making an API call, it delivers an event in under 15 minutes. |
| It keeps measurements and records as data in its dashboard. | It has the ability to centralize and store on an S3 bucket all the logs from many areas and even numerous accounts. |
| It default provides free access to basic monitoring resources like EC2 instances, RDS, etc. | When an AWS account is created, it is enabled by default and begins operating immediately. |
| The health of AWS resources is the primary emphasis of AWS CloudWatch. | The actions that take place inside the AWS environment are the main focus of AWS CloudTrail. |
| It offers services for data gathering, analysis, and application health monitoring. | It offers AWS accounts Auditing services. |
| Logs are preserved in a special group in CloudWatch. | Logs in CloudTrail are kept in an S3 bucket. |
| There are free and premium price tiers for AWS CloudWatch. | Free tier of AWS CloudTrail. If you wish to deliver a single copy of management events, you need to set up a single trail. |
The cornerstone for managing your AWS infrastructure is CloudWatch. It offers a reliable system for capturing and storing metrics and logs.
AWS CloudWatch can be majorly used for:
- Monitor and watch AWS resources.
- Mainly used as a logging tool to collect the logs
- Optimize the system
- Dashboard for analyzing the metrics of the system
If you only need straightforward logging and monitoring for the Amazon Web Services (AWS) cloud, CloudWatch is fantastic.
Although the management tools for viewing and analyzing the data are simple, you can quickly build a full monitoring and management platform for your infrastructure by supplementing CloudWatch with 3rd party solutions.
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