2022-02-15 Chapter 12 - CloudWatch

service-cloudwatch-001; {{c1::AWS CloudWatch}} is a monitoring and observability service that was designed to give us insight into our AWS architecture. It allows us to monitor multiple levels of applications and identify potential issues.

service-cloudwatch-002; In CloudWatch, {{c1::System}} (i.e. {{c1::default}}) Metrics are metrics available out-of-the-box from managed AWS services. An example {{c1::default}} metric is CPU utilisation in EC2.

service-cloudwatch-003; In CloudWatch, {{c1::Application}} (i.e. {{c1::custom}}) Metrics come from inside an EC2 instance, by installing the CloudWatch agent.

service-cloudwatch-004; EC2 Memory Utilisation and EBS Storage Capacity are not provided as default metrics in EC2. To report this, you need to {{c1::install the CloudWatch agent}} and {{c1::create a custom metric}}.

service-cloudwatch-005; Amazon CloudWatch Events rules use {{c1::event patterns}} to select events and route them to targets. A pattern either matches an event or it doesn't. Event patterns are represented as {{c1::JSON objects}} with a structure that is similar to that of events.

service-cloudwatch-006; CloudWatch alarms support creating dependent actions when alarms are triggered, such as {{c1::stopping and restarting}} an EC2 instance.

service-cloudwatch-006; A period is the length of time associated with a specific Amazon CloudWatch statistic. Each statistic represents an aggregation of the metrics data collected for a specified period of time. Periods are defined in numbers of seconds, and valid values for period are 1, 5, 10, 30, or any multiple of 60. For example, to specify a period of six minutes, use 360 as the period value. You can adjust how the data is aggregated by varying the length of the period. A period can be as short as one second or as long as one day (86,400 seconds). The default value is {{c1::60}} seconds.

service-cloudwatch-007; The standard reporting intervals for CloudWatch Alarms is {{c1::5}} minutes. Optional detailed reporting offers {{c1::1 minute}} intervals.

service-cloudwatch-008; {{c1::CloudWatch Logs}} is a tool that allows you to monitor, store and access log files from a variety of different sources (EC2, Lambda, RDS, others). It gives you the ability to query your logs to look for potential issues or data that's relevant to you.

service-cloudwatch-009; In CloudWatch Logs, a {{c1::log event}} is the record of what happened. It contains a timestamp and the data.

service-cloudwatch-010; In CloudWatch Logs, a {{c1::log stream}} is a collection of log events from a single source.

service-cloudwatch-011; In CloudWatch Logs, a {{c1::log group}} is a collection of log streams. For example, you could group all web server logs from different hosts in a single group.

service-cloudwatch-012; In CloudWatch Logs, {{c1::filter patterns}} allow you to look for specific terms inside of logs.

service-cloudwatch-013; {{c1::CloudWatch Logs Insights}} allow you to use SQL-like interactive queries to query all logs at once.

service-cloudwatch-014; It's possible to set CloudWatch {{c1::metrics}} and {{c1::alarms}} based on CloudWatch Logs.

service-cloudwatch-015; If logs don't need to be processed at all, then it might be appropriate to send them to {{c1::S3}} rather than CloudWatch.

service-cloudwatch-016; {{c1::AWS Config}} can be used to check AWS standards and might be a more appropriate choice for this rather than CloudWatch.

service-cloudwatch-017; If logs are to be processed in real time, it might be appropriate to send them to {{c1::Kinesis}} rather than CloudWatch.