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CloudWatch Logs CloudWatch Logs
CloudWatch logs for EC2 CloudWatch Agents
CloudWatch Alarms CloudWatch Alarms
CloudWatch Container insights CloudWatch Container Insights
CloudWatch lambda Insights CloudWatch Lambda Insights
CloudWatch Contributor Insights CloudWatch Contributor Insights
CloudWatch Application Insights CloudWatch Application Insights

What is Amazon CloudWatch?

Amazon CloudWatch is an AWS monitoring service that collects metrics, logs, and events from AWS resources and applications. It helps track performance, detect issues, set alerts, and automate responses to ensure system reliability and efficiency. 🚀

CloudWatch Metrics

Amazon CloudWatch Metrics are time-series data that track the performance of AWS resources and applications.

CloudWatch Metrics, Dimensions, Custom Metrics & Namespace

✅ Metrics (Standard AWS Metrics)
Definition: Time-series data tracking AWS resource performance.
Example: - CPUUtilization → Monitors CPU usage of an EC2 instance. - Latency → Measures response time in API Gateway.

✅ Dimensions
Definition: Key-value pairs to filter/group metrics.
Example: - InstanceId=i-123456 → Filters CPU usage for a specific EC2 instance. - AutoScalingGroupName=web-servers → Groups metrics for Auto Scaling.

✅ Namespace
Definition: A container for storing related CloudWatch metrics. It helps categorize and isolate different metrics.
Example: - AWS/EC2 → Contains EC2 instance metrics (CPU, disk, network). - AWS/Lambda → Stores Lambda function metrics (invocations, duration). - Custom/MyApp → User-defined namespace for application-specific metrics.

✅ Custom Metrics
Definition: User-defined metrics for apps or non-AWS resources.
Example: - ActiveUsers → Tracks number of logged-in users. - FailedTransactions → Monitors failed payments.

How to Send a Custom Metric via AWS CLI: 

aws cloudwatch put-metric-data --namespace "Custom/MyApp" --metric-name "ActiveUsers" --value 150

Types of CloudWatch Metrics

✅ System Metrics – CPU, memory, disk, network usage (EC2, RDS, Lambda).
✅ Application Metrics – API requests, response time, error rates (API Gateway, ALB).
✅ Security Metrics – Unauthorized access, failed logins (CloudTrail, GuardDuty).
✅ Custom Metrics – User-defined metrics (via AWS SDK or CloudWatch Agent). 📌 Granularity: - Basic Monitoring – 5-minute intervals (default). - Detailed Monitoring – 1-minute intervals (paid).

CloudWatch Metric Streams & Workflow Explanation

CloudWatch Metric Streams

What is CloudWatch Metric Streams?

CloudWatch Metric Streams is a feature that enables continuous, near-real-time streaming of CloudWatch metrics to a destination of your choice with low latency. It helps integrate AWS monitoring data with external analytics services and data lakes.

Workflow Breakdown (Based on Image)

  1. CloudWatch Metrics: AWS collects performance data (e.g., CPU, latency).
  2. Kinesis Data Firehose: Metrics are filtered and streamed to Kinesis for further processing.
  3. Destinations: Kinesis Firehose forwards the data to:
    • Amazon S3 (For storage, later analysis with Athena).
    • Amazon Redshift (For data warehousing and analytics).
    • Amazon OpenSearch (For log analysis and visualization).
  4. Third-Party Integrations: Can send data to Datadog, Dynatrace, Splunk, New Relic, Sumo Logic, etc.

This setup ensures efficient metric collection, storage, and analysis for better monitoring and decision-making. 🚀