A Beginner’s Guide to Amazon CloudWatch

With advancements in technology, everything is slowly transforming into cloud-based infrastructure. Currently, an increasing number of organizations are attempting to digitally transform their operations by migrating to the cloud. 

 

This is unsurprising, but it presents a challenge to the IT team, which is responsible for the "effective" delivery of cloud services as well as the impact on the business if these services are disrupted. 

 

So, how do they ensure that services are not jeopardized? The simple solution is to use Amazon CloudWatch, a cloud monitoring tool. Amazon CloudWatch is a component of Amazon Web Services (AWS) that monitors AWS cloud resources and hosted applications. Amazon's cloud computing suite, including Amazon CloudWatch, is used by developers and system administrators for applications and services. 

 

Amazon CloudWatch provides detailed insight into operations through comprehensive reports and metrics, ensuring smooth and efficient operations. Amazon CloudWatch also generates reports on enterprise resource utilization, performance, operational issues, and constraints.

 

This article will be mainly about the amazon cloudwatch, but before that, let us learn something about Amazon Web Services (AWS).

 

What is AWS?

 

Amazon Web Services is a cloud computing platform that provides flexible, dependable, scalable, user-friendly, and cost-effective cloud computing solutions. Amazon Web Services (AWS) is a comprehensive, user-friendly computing platform provided by Amazon. The platform is built using a mix of infrastructure as a service (IaaS), platform as a service (PaaS), and packaged software as a service (SaaS).

 

It encourages organizations to improve their operational efficiency by leveraging the power of data, such as by collecting data using SQL, MySQL, Oracle, and SQL servers. Servers are leased, so Amazon handles security and server maintenance while supporting the simple corporation.

 

Some of the services provided by AWS include computing, storage security, migrations, management, and monitoring. We have got a basic idea about Amazon web services, now it is time to learn about amazon cloudwatch.

 

 

What is Amazon CloudWatch?

 

Amazon CloudWatch is an Amazon Web Services component that provides real-time monitoring of AWS resources and customer applications that run on Amazon infrastructure. AWS cloudwatch is another name for it. 

 

Amazon CloudWatch enables developers, system architects, and administrators to monitor their Amazon Web Services (AWS) applications in the cloud in near-real-time. CloudWatch is set up to automatically provide metrics on request counts, latency, and CPU usage. Users can also send logs and custom metrics to CloudWatch for monitoring.

 

 

How does Amazon CloudWatch work?

 

Now that we know what AWS Cloudwatch is, let us move on to learn about its common workflow. CloudWatch normally performs four actions: first, it collects log and metric data, then it monitors the applications, then it acts in accordance with the instructions, and finally, it analyses the collected log and metric data for future use.

 

When you mention the service in CloudWatch, it begins collecting raw log and metrics data. Even while collecting, it monitors and updates the data. If any issues are discovered while AWS is monitoring, it will act and attempt to troubleshoot them. It will analyze and generate visualized content based on all of the collected log and metric data for better understanding and future use.

 

If we talk about the different concepts, here are a detailed overview of all of them:

 

1. Metrics:

 

Metrics is a time-ordered collection of data points that are published to CloudWatch. Metrics can be linked to variables that are being tracked, and data points can be used to track the value of those variables over time. Metrics are distinguished by a name, a namespace, and one or more dimensions. Each data point includes a timestamp.

 

 

2. Dimensions:

 

A dimension is a name/value pair that identifies a metric in a unique way. Dimensions can be thought of as groups of characteristics that describe a metric. Because dimensions are unique identifiers for metrics, adding a unique name/value pair to one of your metrics results in the creation of a new variation of that metric.

 

 

3. Statistics:

 

Statistics are metric data aggregations over specific time periods. Aggregations are created using the namespace, metric name, and dimensions you specify over the time period you specify. Maximum, minimum, sum, average, and sample count are a few available statistics.

 

 

4. Alarm:

 

An alarm can be used to automate actions on your behalf. It monitors a single metric over a specified time period and takes one or more actions. The action is simply a notification of the Amazon SNS topic.

 

 

Here are the tasks of Amazon CloudWatch:

 

Amazon CloudWatch enables administrators to monitor multiple instances and resources from a single console by performing the following tasks:

 

1. Allows for detailed monitoring of resources such as:

 

• Amazon EC2 hosts virtual instances.

• Amazon RDS-hosted databases

• Amazon S3 data storage

• Load Balancer with Elasticity

• Groups with Auto-Scaling

• Additional resources

 

2. System and application log files are monitored, stored, and accessible.

 

3. Provides a library of standard reports for analyzing trends and monitoring system performance.

 

4. Provides a variety of alert capabilities, such as rules, triggers high-resolution alarms, and sends notifications.

 

5. Collects and displays operational data in the form of key metrics such as CPU utilization, disc storage, and so on in real-time.

 

What are the features of Amazon Cloudwatch?

 

Amazon CloudWatch features include two major services: logging and metrics. Here are the specifics of the two services. 

 

1. AWS CloudWatch Logging Service:

 

AWS Cloudwatch Logs is Amazon's core, unified logging solution for their services and your applications. It includes basic management capabilities as well as log data capture, storage, and retention policies. The main benefit of CloudWatch Logs is a centralized log capture and storage repository. CloudWatch Logs is the log service used by AWS services when they emit log data. 

 

It is invaluable to have a single, consistent capture and access point for log data. Many AWS services, including Lambda, VPC flow logs, and RDS, generate log data that is exported to CloudWatch Logs for storage. Storage, monitoring, viewing, capturing, and managing service and application logs are all part of the process.

 

Applications can send logs to CloudWatch Logs through the EC2 CloudWatch Agent or directly through the AWS API or CLI. There are plugins for many logging frameworks that make this a no-code proposition. CloudWatch Logs can be streamed to other destinations for processing, such as Lambda functions or AWS ElasticSearch.

 

2. AWS CloudWatch Metrics Service:

 

CloudWatch provides metrics services such as capturing and managing resource and operational performance metrics. The CloudWatch metrics service is made up of the following components:

 

• AWS service metrics, CloudWatch Logs Insights, and user applications

• Dashboards displaying time-series metric data

• Alarms are set off when metric values change.

• Streams of events produced when metric values change

 

CloudWatch metrics are time-ordered data points published by AWS services, CloudWatch Logs Insights, or user applications to CloudWatch. A metric has a name, a timestamp, a namespace, and zero or more key/value pairs of data.

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The two services of Cloudwatch (source)

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Let's take a look at the combined features of CloudWatch's Logging and Metric services:

 

• CloudWatch Logs Insights – An interactive log query tool that aids in the visualization and analysis of log data. The log insights tool assists in filtering and aggregating log data, whether it is creating time-series graphs to visualize the data or publishing it to the CloudWatch dashboard.

 

• CloudWatch Logs – With this feature, users can collect and store logs for various AWS services such as AWS CloudTrail, Amazon API Gateway, and so on, as well as for specific applications and on-premise resources.

 

• CloudWatch Alarms – The CloudWatch Alarm monitors the CloudWatch metrics in real-time. If the metric (or metrics) exceeds the set/specified thresholds, an alert is generated. The status of the alarm can also be viewed on the CloudWatch dashboard.

 

• Auto Scaling – This CloudWatch feature is in charge of automating capacity and resource planning.

 

• AWS Integration – CloudWatch is well-known for its ease of integration with AWS Identity and Access Management. These integration features give a management console ownership of ClodWatch data and resources, allowing it to manage and control access to them.

 

• CloudWatch Events – It detects changes in the state of AWS resources and is in charge of creating a near-real-time stream of events that are routed to targets for processing. With the help of these events, the targets are eventually notified of state changes.

 

Goals of CloudWatch Monitoring:

 

Monitoring has two goals: achieving situational awareness in order to provide timely and effective responses and gaining insights for the business, development, and operations that enable proactive courses of action.

 

CloudWatch is used to monitor AWS resources.

 

Amazon CloudWatch is preconfigured to integrate with EC2 and provides two levels of monitoring capabilities:
 

• Basic monitoring, which is free, includes seven pre-selected metrics and three status-check metrics, which are generated at five-minute and one-minute intervals, respectively.

 

• Detailed monitoring, which is available for an additional fee, raises the frequency of all metrics to one-minute intervals.

 

AWS CloudWatch vs CloudTrail:

 

CloudWatch monitors AWS data, resources, and applications, whereas CloudTrail tracks AWS environment activity. The primary distinction between the two is the control and monitoring bandwidth. 

 

CloudWatch aids in application scaling, while CloudTrail clearly aids in tracking down who did what to your applications. CloudWatch monitors the performance of AWS applications, resources, and so on, while CloudTrail monitors the actions that occur as a result of those applications, resources, and so on.

 

Advantages of Amazon CloudWatch:

 

1. Because web applications are widely distributed, they generate a large amount of data; to access all of the collected data, a single CloudWatch dashboard is required.

2. You can see all of the AWS resources and services you use, allowing you to correlate and contradict data generated by multiple services.

3. CloudWatch can be used to set high resolution alarms and take automated actions when the limits are exceeded. This can help to reduce the amount of money spent on AWS services.

4. You get detailed information about individual AWS services as well as the applications you run on the infrastructure. Memory, CPU utilization, and capacity utilization are examples of data that can be monitored and analyzed.

5. You can optimize your AWS services to provide maximum throughput and performance by using log and metric data.

 

Disadvantages of CloudWatch:

 

Here are the drawbacks of cloudwatch:

 

• The CloudWatch dashboard does not support the creation of discrete count histograms.

• CloudWatch does not save memory metrics on EC2.

• Much more expensive than other third-party monitoring and logging tools.

• The integration is restricted to AWS resources only.

 

 

What are the applications of CloudWatch?

 

Organizations are effectively utilizing AWS CloudWatch's monitoring and events features to maintain the health of their AWS environment. AWS CloudWatch can be used for the following purposes:

 

1. Infrastructure monitoring and troubleshooting

 

To understand and resolve the root cause of performance issues in your AWS resources, monitor key metrics and logs, visualize your application and infrastructure stack, create alarms, and correlate data. Monitoring your container ecosystem across Amazon ECS, AWS Fargate, Amazon EKS, and Kubernetes is part of this.

 

 

2. Reduce the average time to resolution.

 

Correlate, visualize, and analyze metrics and logs to quickly resolve issues, and combine them with AWS X-Ray trace data for complete observability. You can also analyze user requests to reduce overall MTTR and speed up troubleshooting and debugging.

 

 

3. Proactively optimize resources

 

CloudWatch alarms compare your metric values to thresholds you specify or that it creates using machine learning models to detect anomalous behavior. When an alarm is raised, CloudWatch can automatically enable Amazon EC2 Auto Scaling or stop an instance, allowing you to automate capacity and resource planning.

 

 

4. Make use of observability analytics

 

Analyze millions of operational logs and metrics in near real-time to identify trends and patterns in your application's performance, and use this knowledge to reduce MTTR. Use fast and interactive operational queries to generate powerful visualizations that will assist you in quickly monitoring and pinpointing issues.

 

Conclusion:

 

CloudWatch serves as the foundation for managing your AWS infrastructure. It provides a robust mechanism for capturing and storing metrics and logs. While the management tools for viewing and analyzing data are basic, you can easily create a comprehensive monitoring and management platform for your infrastructure by augmenting CloudWatch with third-party tools. This blog is about AWS cloudwatch and covers all aspects of the service.