Cloud watch : Basic To Advanced🚀🗿

1. What is Amazon CloudWatch? (Basic)

CloudWatch is a monitoring and observability service by AWS. It lets you track metrics, collect logs, set alarms, and respond to changes in your AWS resources in real time.

Think of it like a CCTV camera and alarm system for your cloud environment.

2. Core Features

a. Metrics

Numeric data points like CPU usage, memory, disk I/O, etc.

Example: You can monitor EC2 CPU usage every minute.

b. Logs

Collects logs from EC2, Lambda, ECS, etc.

Example: View application errors from your Node.js app running on EC2.

c. Alarms

Triggers actions when a metric crosses a threshold.

Example: Send an email if CPU > 80% for 5 mins.

d. Dashboards

Visualize your metrics and logs in real time.

Example: Create a dashboard showing CPU, memory, and disk usage of your EC2 instances.

e. Events (Now called EventBridge)

Detect and respond to changes in your AWS environment.

Example: Automatically restart an EC2 instance if it shuts down unexpectedly.

3. Real-Time Example: EC2 Monitoring

Let’s say you’re running a web server on EC2:

Step-by-step use of CloudWatch:

a. Metrics Collection

EC2 sends CPUUtilization, NetworkIn, etc., to CloudWatch every minute.

You can create custom metrics too (e.g., number of active users).

b. Log Monitoring

Install CloudWatch Agent on EC2 to send /var/log/httpd/access.log and /var/log/httpd/error.log to CloudWatch Logs.

Now, you can search for 500 errors or unusual activity.

c. Alarms

Create an alarm: If CPU > 80% for 5 mins → Send SNS notification.

Optionally, trigger an Auto Scaling Group to launch another EC2 instance.

d. Dashboards

Create a dashboard showing:

CPU usage

Memory

Request count (custom metric)

4. Intermediate: Custom Metrics

If AWS doesn’t provide the metric you want:

You can publish custom metrics using:

aws cloudwatch put-metric-data --namespace "MyApp" --metric-name "ActiveUsers" --value 52

Then you can graph it, add alarms, etc.

5. Advanced Features

a. Anomaly Detection

Automatically detects unusual patterns in your metrics.

Example: If your web app usually gets 200 users at night and suddenly spikes to 5000, CloudWatch can detect and alert you.

b. Composite Alarms

Combine multiple alarms into one.

Example: Alert only when both CPU > 80% and DiskReadOps > 1000.

c. Insights (Logs Insights)

Run SQL-like queries on logs.

Example: Find how many 500 errors occurred in the last hour.

fields @timestamp, @message

| filter @message like /500/

| stats count(*) by bin(1m)

d. Cross-Account Monitoring

Monitor multiple AWS accounts from one dashboard.

Great for large companies with multiple teams/accounts.

6. Integration Examples

Lambda

Monitor invocations, errors, duration.

View logs in CloudWatch Logs.

RDS

Monitor CPU, memory, connections.

API Gateway

Track latency, request count, and errors.

7. Pricing Tip

CloudWatch charges per metric, per log ingestion, and per dashboard/widget.

Use filters and metric retention settings wisely.

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