CloudWatch Fundamentals

What is CloudWatch?

Amazon CloudWatch is a monitoring and observability service that provides data and actionable insights for AWS resources and applications.

Real-Time Monitoring: Track metrics and logs in real-time

Automated Actions: Trigger actions based on alarms

Unified View: Single pane of glass for all resources

Core Components

Metrics

Time-ordered data points for monitoring

Alarms

Automated notifications and actions

Logs

Centralized log collection and analysis

Dashboards

Custom visualization and reporting

Namespace

AWS/EC2
AWS/RDS
AWS/Lambda
AWS/S3
Custom namespaces

Dimensions

Name-value pairs
Filter metrics
Up to 30 per metric
InstanceId, DBName, etc.

Resolution

Standard: 1, 5 minutes
Detailed: 1 minute
High-resolution: 1 second
Custom: any interval

Retention

1 second: 3 hours
1 minute: 15 days
5 minutes: 63 days
1 hour: 455 days

EC2 Monitoring

Basic: 5-minute intervals (free)
Detailed: 1-minute intervals
CPU, Network, Disk metrics
Status checks included

Custom Metrics

PutMetricData API
CloudWatch Agent
Application-level metrics
Business metrics

Pricing

First 10 custom metrics free
$0.30 per metric/month
API requests charged
Dashboard charges apply

Exam Strategy Tip

Remember: CloudWatch provides basic monitoring (5-min) free for EC2. Detailed monitoring (1-min) costs extra. Use namespaces to organize metrics. Dimensions filter metrics. Metrics are retained based on resolution.

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