aws monitoring services

Monitoring in AWS has a few different flavors for various use cases.

CloudWatch

  • CloudWatch - Default #C2 host-level metrics for CPU, network, disk, and status check
    • Use the CloudWatch agent for operating system-level metrics like memory usage,
    processes, and CPU idle time
    • The CloudWatch agent has to be installed separately on the system
  • CloudWatch Logs - Monitor and store logs to help you better understand your systems and apps
  • CloudWatch Alarms - You can create an alarm to monitor any AWS CloudWatch metric

in your account, generate an alert, or take an action

CloudWatch concepts to remember

  • CloudWatch metrics - a metric is a variable to monitor (Ex: CPU usage of an EC2)
  • CloudWatch namespaces - a namespace is a container for CloudWatch metrics
  • CloudWatch dimensions - a dimension is a filter to search for metrics
  • Cloudwatch dashboard - a custom homepage to display things like important metrics
  • Cloudwatch actions - allow you to public, monitor, and alert on a variety of metrics
    • PutMetricData - publishes metric data points to cloudwatch
    • PutMetricAlarm - creates an alarm associated with a metric when a threshold is reached

Use cases for CloudWatch vs. CloudTrail

CloudWatch

  • Monitors performance and metrics
  • CloudWatch logs
  • CloudWatch alarms
  • Do you need to monitor the performance of AWS resources?

CloudTrail

  • Records your API calls for your AWS account
  • API activity history related to creation, deletion, and modification of AWS resources
  • Do I need an audit log of user activity in my AWS account?