AWS CloudWatch

AWS CloudWatch

Amazon CloudWatch provides monitoring and observability for AWS resources and applications. It collects metrics, logs, and events, enabling you to monitor, troubleshoot, and optimize your AWS environment.

Table of Contents

• Core Concepts
• Common Patterns
• CLI Reference
• Best Practices
• Troubleshooting
• References

Core Concepts

Metrics

Time-ordered data points published to CloudWatch. Key components:

• Namespace: Container for metrics (e.g., AWS/Lambda)
• Metric name: Name of the measurement (e.g., Invocations)
• Dimensions: Name-value pairs for filtering (e.g., FunctionName=MyFunc)
• Statistics: Aggregations (Sum, Average, Min, Max, SampleCount, pN)

Logs

Log data from AWS services and applications:

• Log groups: Collections of log streams
• Log streams: Sequences of log events from same source
• Log events: Individual log entries with timestamp and message

Alarms

Automated actions based on metric thresholds:

• States: OK, ALARM, INSUFFICIENT_DATA
• Actions: SNS notifications, Lambda functions, Auto Scaling, EC2 actions, Systems Manager OpsItems
• Types: metric (incl. metric math, anomaly detection, Metrics Insights), composite, log (scheduled Logs Insights query evaluated M-out-of-N on query results)
• Mute rules: scheduled windows that mute actions while alarms keep evaluating

Common Patterns