Overview

CloudWatch collects monitoring and operational data from your AWS resources, applications, and services in the form of logs, metrics, and events. It's like having a team of virtual system administrators watching your applications 24/7, tracking their health and performance.

The service automatically collects basic metrics from most AWS services, such as CPU usage, memory utilization, and network traffic. You can also create custom metrics to monitor specific aspects of your applications, like the number of orders processed or active users.

One of CloudWatch's key features is its ability to trigger automated actions based on changes in your metrics. For example, it can automatically add more servers when traffic increases or send notifications when errors occur. This helps you maintain application performance and avoid potential issues before they impact your users.

CloudWatch also provides visualization tools that help you see trends and patterns in your application's behavior over time. These insights can help you make better decisions about resource allocation and troubleshoot problems more effectively.

Example uses

Performance Monitoring: Track CPU usage, memory, and disk space across all your servers and get alerted when resources are running low.
Application Logging: Collect and analyze log files from your applications to troubleshoot issues and track user behavior.
Billing Alerts: Set up alerts to notify you when your AWS costs exceed certain thresholds.
Automated Responses: Automatically scale your application resources up or down based on usage patterns.

Integration with other AWS services

CloudWatch integrates deeply with other AWS services:

Amazon EC2: Monitor your virtual servers' performance and health
AWS Lambda: Track the execution time and error rates of your serverless functions
Amazon SNS: Send notifications when alerts are triggered
AWS Auto Scaling: Automatically adjust resource capacity based on CloudWatch metrics

Think of CloudWatch as your application's health monitoring system, helping you ensure everything runs smoothly and efficiently while alerting you to any potential problems.

Amazon CloudWatch