AWS Monitoring & Observability: CloudWatch, CloudTrail, X-Ray and More
Once an app is running on AWS, the next question is: how do you know if it is actually okay? AWS gives you a handful of services to watch performance, audit who did what, trace requests across systems, and check the health of AWS itself. The mental map ┌─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┐ │ WATCH performance & react │ │ • CloudWatch Metrics (numbers: CPU, network, billing) │ │ • CloudWatch Alarms (trigger on a metric) │ │ • CloudWatch Logs (collect log files) │ │ • EventBridge (react to events / schedule) │ ├─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┤ │ AUDIT who did what │ │ • CloudTrail (API call history / audit) │ ├─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┤ │ TRACE & analyze app behavior │ │ • X-Ray (trace requests across services) │ │ • CodeGuru (ML code review + profiling) │ ├─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┤ │ CHECK service health │ │ • Health Dashboard (Service) (all AWS, all regions) │ │ • Health Dashboard (Account) (events impacting YOU) │ └─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘ CloudWatch — the core monitoring service Metrics CloudWatch Metrics are numbers tracked over time — CPUUtilization, NetworkIn, and so on....