Amazon CloudWatch Reviews

My company's clients use Amazon CloudWatch, which offers a very good performance for application performance monitoring, as well as the integrations part.

Amazon CloudWatch's best feature stems from its ability to monitor app performance. People also use Amazon CloudWatch for integration with AWS services.

I think Amazon CloudWatch has built a very good service in terms of integration since it can integrate with Docker, EC2, and Kubernetes, owing to which we don't have any problem with the solution in our company right now as it works fine. Amazon CloudWatch resolved its performance issues quickly as well. I don't think there is anything bad in Amazon CloudWatch.

I don't think I need to comment on any additional features that need to be included in Amazon CloudWatch since they roll out new features as per the roadmap Amazon has planned.

The dashboard of Amazon CloudWatch is not very customizable right now. In the future, I would like the dashboard of Amazon CloudWatch to be made more customizable.

I have been using Amazon CloudWatch for more than three to four years. My company operates as an integrator, consultant, and partner of Amazon.

It is a stable solution.

With Amazon CloudWatch, you don't need to worry about scalability in terms of volume or in terms of horizontal or vertical growth. In general, Amazon CloudWatch is a highly scalable product.

My company's clients who use Amazon CloudWatch and I deal with are mostly small and medium-sized companies.

The solution's technical support is great since I haven't faced any challenges yet. I rate the technical support a nine out of ten.

Positive

The product's installation phase is very easy. In our company, we didn't face any problems with the product's installation part.

With Amazon CloudWatch, the time taken for the installation phase is only related to the configuration part. You just need to do the configuration on the basis of availability, after which you need to make sure that you have a configuration ready, making it a very easy process that doesn't take hours to finish.

Amazon CloudWatch is a really good product compared to its competitors in the market.

With Amazon CloudWatch, my company did not find the need to get involved with the maintenance part as it is a service. It is the cloud service provider who makes sure that the service is available all the time, so you don't have to worry about the maintenance part.

I rate the overall product a nine out of ten.

We utilize Amazon CloudWatch for logging purposes, and when it comes to monitoring our services, like the current task of setting up EPS clusters, we rely on it for essential checks. This includes monitoring the health and performance of our EKS (Elastic Kubernetes Service) and regularly inspecting the cluster's status through the management portal.

We have been highly satisfied with its event scheduler feature. Enabling this feature has proven to be quite beneficial as it allows for the seamless automation of various tasks. It offers direct integrations with various storage providers, making it convenient to push logs from CloudWatch to these external platforms. For instance, if I need to transfer my logs from CloudWatch to a third-party storage solution, it provides a robust integration mechanism for such use cases.

There could be further enhancements through CloudWatch's partnerships. It allows integration with additional log archive tools, such as Splunk. I am not certain if direct integration is currently available, this would be a valuable improvement to explore.

I have been working with it for five years.

Occasionally, there can be some complexity involved in crafting custom queries to extract specific information from them, so I would rate the stability eight out of ten.

It is highly scalable and capable of handling a vast amount of logs. In our particular scenario, we haven't encountered a use case where we need to retain logs for the past fifteen years. I would rate it eight out of ten.

In the past, we relied on on-premises services for logging and other tasks, so we often had to manage a lot of data transfer between different systems, which could be quite cumbersome. Since we've transitioned to AWS for hosting our resources and solutions, we've found that it's much more efficient to use cloud-native services like CloudWatch. When your infrastructure and solutions are already on AWS, it's a logical choice to leverage the cloud's services rather than dealing with the complexities of integrating with external services.

The initial setup was not complex.

Synchronization is the default setting for certain services, and it's automatically enabled. For custom configurations, we had to take proactive steps and perform specific deployments. Apart from these cases, deploying this solution is generally straightforward.

It is a free-of-charge service.

We encountered several challenges during our transition, with the integration process. When considering third-party logging solutions, one of the key concerns is how the integration process will be handled, as it may not be as straightforward as using built-in services.

The choice of logging solution should always be determined by the specific business requirements. It is crucial to align the logging strategy with what type of logs are needed and how they should be used. There are instances where we require custom solutions to retrieve logs, especially application logs that may not be easily accessible through CloudWatch or similar services. When we heavily rely on AWS native services, CloudWatch is indeed a robust choice. However, in certain scenarios, we might need integration capabilities with other tools, and if they can incorporate such features, it would enhance overall logging capabilities. I would rate it eight out of ten.

It serves as a diagnostic and profiling tool, particularly useful for dissecting the intricacies of applications, especially in scenarios like Microsoft's best applications. When a user triggers transactions through the GUI, such as purchasing tickets for events like cricket or concerts, the process involves multiple layers—starting from the front-end GUI to the back-end middle tier, microservices, and concluding with database interactions. It allows me to meticulously analyze and monitor these processes by creating and examining various logs. I can delve into the details of each stage, from API calls to network components, and server processing (involving Java Virtual Machine), and even gauge how long specific APIs or queries take to execute. This tool proves invaluable in identifying bottlenecks, such as waiting times or timeouts and understanding the performance of APIs, queries, and even the efficiency of gateways.

When working with AWS services like Lambda functions and AWS Step Functions, it facilitates the creation of insightful dashboards. These dashboards offer a comprehensive view of Lambda function performance, allowing me to gauge capacity utilization and identify areas requiring optimization. In recent experiences, its profiling capabilities have been instrumental in creating detailed dashboards for monitoring.

It is a robust analytical tool and it goes beyond mere functionality and extends into the realm of providing comprehensive insights. It empowers me with analytical skills and capabilities, offering a detailed snapshot of the entire process of requests within an application. Its strength lies in its ability to paint a vivid picture of the application's performance by breaking down the journey of each request, revealing which components are causing delays, and identifying specific pain points.

There is a need for seamless integration with databases, whether they are open-source or proprietary like InfluxDB. Incorporating a straightforward method or a plug-and-play solution for integrating these databases with our systems, facilitating smooth data transfer, and enabling the creation of dashboards for monitoring and analysis would be beneficial.

Over the past six to seven months, I've been actively using it for one of our ongoing projects, but my broader experience extends over two to three years, particularly in migration projects from on-premises to cloud-based solutions.

I find it remarkably stable. Its effectiveness in helping me discern patterns, understand the behavior of components, requests, queries, or even aspects related to application performance is noteworthy.

Approximately forty to fifty individuals within the current organization use it actively.

When issues arise or specific requirements demand assistance, the process of reaching out to support can be somewhat cumbersome. Resolving concerns involve navigating through channels, creating or accessing accounts, and then connecting with support.

While I have some hands-on involvement, the extent of my practical experience has been limited as the detailed implementation is usually managed by specialized teams.

The pricing can be considered reasonable, especially when already operating on a cloud platform. The cost is justifiable given the expertise it offers and its capabilities in addressing challenges associated with cloud environments.

Leveraging CloudWatch is advantageous due to its seamless integration with cloud services, making it a valuable asset for monitoring and gaining insights into the platform's performance. Overall, I would rate it eight out of ten.

It's a monitoring tool. If we want to monitor any of the applications hosted in AWS, we can see the logs and the artifacts of those applications in CloudWatch.

If we deploy anything and get into some issues, it would be pretty difficult to understand it. So, we go through the CloudWatch logs of the application to understand why we are getting the error. It helps us to resolve the issues.

The product can be integrated with AWS very easily. Most of the services are in-built. We just need to have the configurations. We can easily get the logs we need from those services. It gives us the logs of CPU utilization and memory utilization of the applications.

The product’s documentation must be improved. We faced an issue with a service that is integrated with CloudWatch. Whenever there were 50,000 to 60,000 log lines, CloudWatch only showed us 10,000 to 15,000. We could not get all the log lines in the same place. When we tried to get everything together, the product crashed.

I have been using the solution for around two years.

I rate the tool’s stability an eight out of ten.

I rate the tool’s scalability a nine out of ten.

The support team is good.

Positive

It’s an open-source solution.

It's an AWS service. We just have to integrate it into our application, and we'll be able to see the values and logs on the server. If an organization is using AWS, only then they should use CloudWatch. It is already integrated into AWS. Just a few clicks will show the logs and data that we need. Overall, I rate the tool a nine out of ten.

We use the solution to monitor our AWS resources. We used Azure extensively but a couple of years back we moved to use both Azure and AWS. Currently, we have three main use cases. 

Our predominant use case is monitoring our S3 which includes terabytes of data. We monitor all the buckets and containers plus who has access to them, the thresholds, and user data. We constantly watch all the KPIs and CloudWatch metrics. 

Our second use case is watching logs and processes for other products such as AWS tools, AWS Glue, and Redshift which includes a few terabytes of data.

Our third use case is minor and with Athena.

Our fourth use case is new. We just started using SageMaker for a small POC and want to complete all of our data modeling and logs.

In the future, we will be using the solution with Airflow, which will become one of our biggest use cases. 

CloudWatch works very well with any of the AWS resources so we always monitor through it.

Our business flow has improved because we monitor email thresholds and immediately get an alert from CloudWatch if use goes beyond thresholds. Without this alert, we would have to use external monitoring. 

It is valuable that CloudWatch collects all the metrics. I primarily like the RUM. There is an instantaneous response when monitoring logs and KPIs. CloudWatch immediately hooks up and connects to the KPIs and all the metrics. 

Even though the product works well with most AWS, it is a nightmare to use with Snowflake. Snowflake is a SaaS product hosted on AWS, but using it with CloudWatch still doesn't give us the support we need so we rely on separate monitoring. 

We have many databases such as MongoDB and SQL Server, RDS, and PostgreSQL. For these, CloudWatch is good but a little basic and additional monitoring tools are required. It's challenging to use one monitoring tool for S3 and another monitoring tool for Snowflake. 

It would be beneficial for CloudWatch to provide an API interface and some kind of custom configuration because everybody uses APIs now. Suppose Snowflake says we'd get all the same things with MongoDB such as APIs, hookups, or even monitoring. That would allow us to build our own custom solution because that is the biggest limitation of CloudWatch. If you go a bit beyond AWS products even if they're hosted on AWS, CloudWatch doesn't work very well. 

I'd also like an improved UI because it hasn't significantly improved in a few years and we want to see it at a more granular level. I get my KPIs in a bucket usage for yesterday but I'd like to see them by a particular date and week. We have three buckets rolled by hundreds of people and I want to see use cases for an individual to determine where I need to customize and provide more room. I want aggregation on multiples, not one terameter. 

I have been using the solution for two years. 

The solution is very stable with absolutely no issues. We used to see a delay when we were setting up three buckets but now we receive instantaneous notifications. 

The solution is definitely scalable. Most of our development environment uses it and we are running three teams of 150-200 people. Usage levels are different between developers and the support team so the total users at one time is 100-150. 

The solution is managed by our internal AWS maintenance team. Seven people manage our cloud environment and seven manage our platform side for not just CloudWatch, but everything on AWS.

We still need to find a solution for Snowflake and Tableau environments unless CloudWatch provides better support in the future. 

The support staff are seasoned professionals and are good. Amazon provides the benchmark for support and nothing else compares.

On-premises, we have used other solutions like Sumo Logic, Azure Logic Apps and others. Not everyone uses AWS so we have a lot of tools we use.

Previously we used some main external app logic but it didn't work well with AWS tools. I would have to figure it out and configure Aurora to do something or find a way to do S3 buckets. Those solutions worked well for on-premises, but not with AWS and clouds.

The setup for this solution is pretty simple and anyone can do it if they are on AWS. Setting up all our VPC and private links connecting to our gateways took some time, but CloudWatch setup was a no-brainer and took a couple of days. 

Our implementation was done in conjunction with a third party. We like to bring in a few engineers to work with our engineers and then we partner with a third party like Slalom to help with integration. Our process is a mix of all three with AWS staff helping for a couple of weeks and Slalom for a couple of months. Our team slowly takes over management. 

We plan to increase our usage because we don't have another monitoring tool right now. With the Airflow orchestration, our CloudWatch use will significantly increase as we monitor all of our RUM, notifications, jobs, and runs. Our runs and billings will increase 20-30% once we start using Airflow. 

Because CloudWatch doesn't support all externally hosted products, I rate it a nine out of ten for ROI. 

I don't know specifics about pricing because we pay for all our AWS services in a monthly bundle and that includes CloudWatch, Redshift, VPCs, EC2s, S3s, A39s, and others. We spend about $5 million per year on AWS with CloudWatch being about 5% of that cost. 

I did not evaluate other solutions. Once we moved to AWS, we looked for a tool that was native to that cloud. That is the process we are currently undertaking for Snowflake and Tableau because CloudWatch doesn't support them well. We do try to use CloudWatch as much as possible. 

The solution is pretty good because it automatically comes and works well with AWS. Before you use any product from AWS, think about whether it is supported or how it will interface. I suggest using the solution with one product at a time and then transitioning to important interfaces. 

If you find you can't configure the solution with Redshift for example, and are struggling to build your S3 even though both use S3, then you may have to find another monitoring solution. It makes sense to follow Amazon's best practices. They advise not to use certain monitoring components alone but to use them as an integral part of your system. Monitor your ecosystem and think of a high-level picture of it rather than just determining that CloudWatch must be a part of Redshift. This solution is just one part of an entire system. 

I would rate the solution a nine out of ten. 

We collect the CloudWatch logs and use them to analyze security. It helps us to monitor malicious activity.

Amazon CloudWatch is an important tool in AWS. If we have an AWS-based infrastructure, the product must be enabled in all environments. If we have different environments in the cloud, CloudWatch is mandatory. The tool enables live monitoring. It is easier for us to track who logs in and out of the systems and how the computing services work.

The product is more than enough for what we need daily. Amazon improves things year on year. It is quite straightforward for us. We are using the solution to monitor our live environment. If an attack happens, we can track it down using the logs easily and act fast to isolate the threat. The retention of the logs and live tracking features are useful for us.

The integration with third-party tools must be made easier.

I have been using the solution for five to six years.

I rate the product’s stability a nine out of ten. We do not face any downtimes.

We have more than 600 users in our organization. Every user in the organization is asked to enable CloudWatch in every environment. I rate the scalability a nine out of ten. Whenever we add more accounts, CloudWatch is enabled in those accounts.

The technical support is pretty good. The team is always available. The support persons are readily available to get into a call and sort out our issues.

Positive

Amazon CloudWatch is a native service of AWS, and the bill is included with the other services in AWS. We receive a collective bill. The tool is not expensive. I rate the pricing an eight out of ten.

I will recommend the product to others. CloudWatch brings in a lot of value. It enables live monitoring. We have ten engineers in our technical team. The tool is self-sufficient. It does not require much maintenance. We enable it, ensure the logs are pushed to the third-party tools, and monitor them. It does not require any deployment process. We are more aligned with Amazon’s services when building our products. It is suitable for our business purposes. Overall, I rate the product a nine out of ten.

Amazon CloudWatch is a monitoring and availability service designed to collect and check metrics and collect and monitor log files. We can set alarms, and Amazon CloudWatch allows users to gain operational insight into their application resource and services. The solution also helps users to ensure the reliability, performance, and availability of their infrastructure.

The most valuable features of Amazon CloudWatch are metrics, dashboards, alarms, logs, events, logs insight, and application insights.

The solution should provide human-readable metrics. Amazon CloudWatch should add custom metrics, like static metrics or any data relevant to our use case.

I have been using Amazon CloudWatch for more than three years.

More than five people are using Amazon CloudWatch in our organization.

The solution’s technical support is good.

The solution’s initial setup is easy.

Amazon CloudWatch is a cheap solution.

We don't need to update or do any maintenance on Amazon CloudWatch. The solution has more features available, like metrics. Amazon CloudWatch provides a wide range of metrics for AWS resources, including EC2 and all AWS services. Users can create a custom dashboard to visualize and monitor metrics from various AWS services on a single screen on the dashboard.

This helps in checking the health and performance of the application and resources. Amazon CloudWatch logs allow users to monitor and install log files from the application. The solution's alarms allow users to set thresholds on metrics.

Overall, I rate the solution ten out of ten.

I use it for log monitoring and log capture. That's the main purpose. 

Alerts and notifications functions help with the operational response. For example, if you have a critical server and want to set an alert if CPU utilization exceeds 90%, a notification will be raised. You can link an action to that notification, not just notify. 

You can automate actions or use AWS functionalities like auto-scaling, where you can configure the metrics to add more nodes if the threshold is exceeded. AWS has become very rich in functionality over time, and the same piece of functionality can solve different problems.

CloudWatch automation works through notifications linked to Lambda functions, which can then perform any automation you like.

CloudWatch has many things. It gives you metrics and logs. You can set up alerts and notifications for the metrics and do a lot of automation once you have the notifications. 

You can also create dashboards, although it's an additional fee that AWS charges. We can create a different dashboard with Grafana kind of thing. 

The use cases are different for different people, but three things everyone uses are: 

• Metrics monitoring
• Log monitoring, and 
• Alerting and notification.

CloudWatch is extremely helpful for automation and other things for experienced users, but it's not very intuitive. It doesn't have drag-and-drop functionality to trigger actions from notifications. It's very capable, but it requires expert knowledge to leverage that capability.

So, for new or basic users, it's a bit complex to understand how it works. Basic users can see what is happening in the console, but building automation and other things requires expert knowledge.

Improvement in log patterns and metrics: 

There are a lot of things. For example, there are log patterns and metric patterns. But if you have to do anomaly detection, I think the latest version added that, but they didn't have it before. Users can build it; Users can stream the log, build log analytics, and do anomaly detection, but it is not very straightforward. It's a very powerful tool, but you need expert knowledge to do those things.

Region-specific service puts certain limits:

Also, CloudWatch is a very region-specific service. People struggle with that, for example, if you have an application distributed in different geographies like Europe, India, and the USA. There is no way to aggregate CloudWatch logs in one place for workloads in every region. You need a third-party tool to get a holistic view of your application. CloudWatch has the data, but you need advanced skills to aggregate it and create insights.

Suggestions for additional functionality for CloudWatch: 

Cloudwatch needs better built-in analytics capability. CloudWatch has a lot of data, but it's difficult to gain insights unless you stream it to a third-party log analytics tool. If there were built-in capabilities to analyze the data, that would be great.

I have been using Amazon CloudWatch for ten years. We do work on a lot of AWS services, like CloudWatch, SageMaker, and even their generative AI solution like Bedrock.

I would rate the stability a ten out of ten. There are no issues with stability. 

I would rate the scalability a ten out of ten. 

There are around 50 end users, and all the ops people use CloudWatch.

AWS provides multiple support levels, including basic, business, and enterprise support. Your experience can differ depending on your support level.

My company uses business support. Quality-wise, it's okay most of the time, but sometimes, you get people with less experience. Response time could be improved because, for production applications, you want immediate support. Sometimes, it can take up to an hour to get someone on chat support.

Neutral

Azure also has something like CloudWatch. All cloud vendors have something similar.

The initial setup is very simple. 

CloudWatch also has an API, so I can send logs to CloudWatch by calling the API. But natively, it only integrates with AWS services.

Integration capabilities: 

AWS has built different frameworks, like the simple notification service (SNS). From AWS SNS, I can fire Lambda or integrate with the event bus, AWS EventBridge. From an integration point of view among the peers, AWS is probably one of the best that offers you the integration capability.

I would rate the pricing in the middle. It is a five out of ten, with one being high price, and ten being low price. 

Everyone needs it. There is no other way to capture central logs, so it's for everyone, irrespective of the size of the company.

I would recommend it. Overall, I would rate it an eight out of ten.