Management and Governance
Amazon CloudWatch
A monitoring and observability service for metrics, logs, alarms, dashboards, and application or resource signals.
Key points
- CloudWatch metrics represent measurements over time.
- Alarms watch metrics and can notify or trigger actions when thresholds are met.
- CloudWatch Logs centralizes log data from supported resources and applications.
Best-known use cases
- Monitor CPU utilization or application metrics.
- Alert when an operational threshold is crossed.
What candidates often confuse it with
- CloudWatch answers how a resource or application is behaving; CloudTrail answers who made an AWS API call.
- Config tracks resource configuration and compliance over time; it is not a performance-monitoring service.
Key Cloud Practitioner takeaway
Metrics, logs, dashboards, and alarms point to CloudWatch; API audit history points to CloudTrail.
Related services
- AWS CloudTrail
- AWS Config
Relevant exam tasks
- D2.2