Amazon CloudWatch Reviews

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. 

CloudWatch is important because we use it to remediate automation. For example, I had to integrate GuardDuty with CloudWatch. If anything went wrong in the environment when GuardDuty had captured all the APIs, and if someone got an alarm on the server, it was basically because of CloudWatch. CloudWatch would have seen an intruder, thinking, "This is what's happening," and so on.

I used the solution to monitor, collect, and store metrics from AWS solutions like EC2. Taking all these metrics from other sections, such as GuardDuty for the security department and all the security hubs, you are presented with all the views at once.

CloudWatch is required for the organization to stay compliant.

The detection is the most valuable feature.

CloudWatch's scalability could be improved.

I've been using CloudWatch for almost five years.

I rate CloudWatch's stability a seven out of ten.

I rate CloudWatch's scalability a seven out of ten.

The solution was easy to deploy.

The price is okay for me. How good the pricing is depends on how you want to use the solution.

CloudWatch has good features and tools. No matter how many people are on the security team, CloudWatch monitors the performance of your gateway resources daily, including CPU utilization and network traffic. If you are new to monitoring, CloudWatch is good because it helps you monitor your environment and your logs and captures and generates logs by applications and resources. I rate CloudWatch an eight out of ten.

Amazon CloudWatch helps us with some monitoring, analyzing different logs, and collecting and aggregating infrastructure and application metrics. The solution also helps us with container metrics.

The most valuable feature of Amazon CloudWatch is collecting the logs from Lambda.

The solution's auto-scaling could be improved.

Log analytics features should be included in the next release of Amazon CloudWatch.

I have used Amazon CloudWatch for the last two years.

I rate Amazon CloudWatch an eight out of ten for stability.

I rate Amazon CloudWatch an eight out of ten for scalability.

Amazon CloudWatch helped us meet our business requirement goals.

Amazon CloudWatch's features, like logs, metrics, and co-relations, can be useful for users looking for monitoring or collecting logs.

Overall, I rate Amazon CloudWatch an eight out of ten.

We use the solution to monitor the devices on our system or infrastructure. CloudWatch notifies you when a token is used or when the VM is not working. It helps you to determine the status of your infrastructure.

We created a CloudWatch application or feature for our system to provide us with the ongoing status of our machines or components in the network.

Scheduling is a valuable feature.

When you set up CloudWatch, you can't even take a lot without checking on them or without going through the whole configuration because we're configuring. It's not a frequent feature you always work on.

The integration requires a lot of permissions and the tool delays in providing notifications. Sometimes, receiving a notification after an update takes a long time. So, we prefer using a monitoring tool like New Relic or Grafana.

Another area of improvement is scheduling. CloudWatch is complicated when it comes to scheduling. If you want to monitor the component, the configuration is not straightforward. You need good knowledge for something to be added there.

I have been using Amazon CloudWatch for two years. We use the latest version of CloudWatch.

I rate the solution’s scalability an eight out of ten.

I rate the solution’s scalability an eight out of ten.

It is hard to configure; it is not a straightforward tool.

We see an ROI. 

The price is okay. 

If someone wants to use the product. It depends on whether the company can use another tool. If so, I recommend AWS, which, too, has a monitoring tool. However, it may still be too expensive for a small company. I recommend using CloudWatch for a small company if they don’t have money.

Overall, I rate the solution an eight out of ten.

We use Amazon CloudWatch for monitoring applications. We use it for Synthetics and also RAM. Amazon CloudWatch has been very helpful for monitoring our applications. We have been able to create a monitoring account where we get metrics, traces, and application monitoring data in one account. One noteworthy feature is that this is free of cost.

Amazon CloudWatch has been very helpful for monitoring our applications. We have been able to create a monitoring account where we get metrics, traces, and application monitoring data in one account. One noteworthy feature is that this is free of cost.

The most valuable part is the metrics part, which is really good. They recently introduced Application Signals, which we like the most. Additionally, the Synthetics feature is something that we love.

There is some delay in logging that they need to improve on. While CloudWatch is good, when compared to Dynatrace, there are several areas for improvement. For instance, Dynatrace has better distributed tracing and a feature like back trace, which CloudWatch lacks. In terms of alerts, we use PagerDuty, but composite alarms and similar features need more work.

I would say I have almost three years of experience with Amazon CloudWatch.

Amazon CloudWatch is stable. However, there is some delay in logging that needs improvement.

It is pretty scalable. We have not had any problems so far.

Amazon's customer service is very good. They are both responsive and knowledgeable. Depending on the ticket, they connect us with the right resource without having us jump through different channels.

Positive

Previously, we used Dynatrace, which is an APM tool. We recently moved to CloudWatch but still use Dynatrace.

The initial setup of Amazon CloudWatch is very simple. On a scale of one to ten, I would rate the ease of setup between nine and ten.

Multiple squads and teams, approximately 200 different teams, have been using Amazon CloudWatch.

Return on this investment is still to be discovered. Currently, we are in the middle of migration, paying for both on-prem and CloudWatch, as well as Dynatrace and CloudWatch. Once everything is settled in the cloud, we will have a clearer picture.

In general, Amazon CloudWatch is cheaper compared to Dynatrace. However, there are potential costs to be mindful of, like running a log query that returns trillions of bytes of data.

I have experience with Dynatrace. Comparing CloudWatch against Dynatrace highlights many areas for improvement.

I would definitely recommend CloudWatch if your applications are running in AWS. If your applications are in a different environment or cloud, I am not sure I would recommend it.

I'd rate the solution six out of ten.

We use the solution for monitoring CPU usage, memory usage, Lambda logs, and load balancer logs.

The monitoring features are valuable. The product pushes notifications with the help of SNS. We can increase or decrease our instances horizontally or vertically. We are collecting CloudWatch logs in Grafana too. We have also configured it with Kibana.

CloudWatch doesn’t monitor disk throughput by default. It is part of EC2. If EC2 forwards the logs, then we can do it.

I have been using the solution for three years.

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

The tool’s scalability is good. I rate the scalability a seven and a half out of ten. I have configured two instances for CPU usage. It breaks the threshold. It scales up and down multiple times. It is better to build only one instance in such facilities. We have 30 users in our organization.

The support is good.

Positive

The initial setup is easy. The deployment takes around five minutes. It is very fast.

The pricing is average.

We were using third-party tools before. We had to configure the third-party tools.

I will recommend the tool to others. Overall, I rate the solution an eight out of ten.

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.

My company uses the solution to collect logs from other sources, including Amazon Virtual Private Cloud. All the logs are collected from Amazon CloudWatch. From the log groups, my company sends S3 and other third-party applications. My company uses Amazon CloudWatch for monitoring purposes.

Amazon CloudWatch is a tool that already provides my company with external features. I will have to check all the features provided by Amazon CloudWatch. Monitoring is one of the best features of Amazon CloudWatch. Amazon CloudWatch can be considered as a tunnel where you can collect logs.

In my company, we have created a Lambda function to collect logs from CraC. Our company particularly uses Lambda function in Amazon CloudWatch's log groups. From Amazon CloudWatch, in my company, we are not getting proper logs from particular services. When my company faces the aforementioned issues, we have to get involved in the troubleshooting process while also keeping a check on Lambda functions. In my company, we are unable to get proper logs even with Lambda functions, making it one of the areas that needs improvement.

The monitoring part and GUI are areas in Amazon CloudWatch that have shortcomings currently and can be considered for improvements in the future.

I have been using Amazon CloudWatch for two to three years.

It is a stable solution.

In my company, we have around 20 AWS accounts, and on each AWS account, we use Amazon CloudWatch. The major purpose of the solution is to collect logs.

I rate the technical support a ten out of ten.

Positive

The initial setup of Amazon CloudWatch is easy.

The solution is deployed on the cloud.

I consider it as a medium-priced solution. The prices are dependent on the size of the log collection users require for their environments. If users opt for 10 TB, they need to pay a different price, while those who opt for 1 TB and 1 GB pay a different price.

For the audit purposes of your environment or to collect some details through a better procedure, you can consider Amazon CloudWatch. Whether to use Amazon CloudWatch or not depends entirely on your environment.

I rate the overall solution a nine out of ten.