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AWS CloudWatch: Monitoring and Observability Service
AWS CloudWatch is a comprehensive monitoring and observability service that provides real-time insights into the performance and health of AWS resources and applications. It collects and analyzes data from various sources, allowing users to gain visibility, troubleshoot issues, and make informed decisions about their infrastructure. Here's a comprehensive list of AWS CloudWatch features along with their definitions:
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Metrics and Alarms:
- Definition: Collects and stores metrics, which are time-series data points representing the behavior of resources. Allows users to set alarms based on metric thresholds for proactive monitoring.
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Dashboards:
- Definition: Enables users to create custom dashboards that aggregate and visualize multiple metrics. Provides a centralized view of key performance indicators and system health.
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Custom Metrics:
- Definition: Supports the creation and publishing of custom metrics. Allows users to monitor specific application or business-specific metrics beyond the pre-defined AWS metrics.
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Logs and Log Groups:
- Definition: Provides centralized logging through CloudWatch Logs. Allows users to collect, store, and analyze logs generated by AWS services, applications, and custom sources.
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Log Streams and Log Events:
- Definition: Organizes logs into log groups, and further into log streams. Users can search and filter log events within log streams to identify and troubleshoot issues.
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CloudWatch Alarms:
- Definition: Enables users to set alarms on metrics to receive notifications when certain conditions are met. Alarms can trigger actions, such as sending notifications or auto-scaling adjustments.
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Metric Math:
- Definition: Supports metric math expressions for combining, aggregating, and transforming metrics. Allows users to perform calculations on metrics to derive meaningful insights.
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Event Rules:
- Definition: Creates event rules to respond to changes in AWS resources. Event rules can trigger actions such as sending notifications, invoking Lambda functions, or initiating automated workflows.
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CloudWatch Events:
- Definition: Provides a real-time stream of system events and changes. Allows users to respond to events by triggering automated actions.
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Unified CloudWatch Agent:
- Definition: Offers a unified CloudWatch agent for collecting and forwarding logs and metrics from Amazon EC2 instances, on-premises servers, and containers.
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Container Insights:
- Definition: Provides insights into containerized applications by collecting and analyzing metrics and logs from Amazon ECS and Amazon EKS. Helps monitor and troubleshoot containerized workloads.
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Application Insights:
- Definition: Offers Application Insights for monitoring and troubleshooting applications. Provides end-to-end visibility into application health, including dependencies and performance bottlenecks.
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Synthetic Monitoring:
- Definition: Supports synthetic monitoring with CloudWatch Synthetics. Allows users to create and run scripted tests to monitor application endpoints and user experiences.
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Cross-Account and Cross-Region Dashboards:
- Definition: Facilitates the creation of dashboards that aggregate metrics from multiple AWS accounts and regions. Useful for centralized monitoring in complex architectures.
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Anomaly Detection:
- Definition: Utilizes anomaly detection to automatically identify unusual behavior in metrics. Helps users detect and respond to abnormal patterns in resource performance.
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CloudWatch Contributor Insights:
- Definition: Provides Contributor Insights to analyze and visualize top contributors to high-cardinality data in CloudWatch Logs. Useful for identifying patterns and outliers.
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CloudWatch Logs Insights:
- Definition: Offers Logs Insights for interactive analysis of log data. Allows users to query and visualize log events to identify issues and troubleshoot applications.
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CloudWatch ServiceLens:
- Definition: Provides ServiceLens for end-to-end visibility into application health. Visualizes dependencies and performance across distributed applications.
AWS CloudWatch is a powerful monitoring service that plays a critical role in ensuring the reliability and performance of AWS resources and applications. Its features for metrics, logs, alarms, and synthetic monitoring make it an essential tool for maintaining a robust and well-monitored cloud environment.