What are the types of AWS monitoring?
Infrastructure monitoring
Tracks the health and performance of EC2 instances, auto-scaling groups, EBS volumes, and more.
Application performance monitoring
Monitors the performance of web applications, services, and transactions running on AWS.
Cloud resource monitoring
Keeps tabs on S3 storage usage, database performance (e.g., RDS and DynamoDB), and network traffic.
Log monitoring
Collects and analyzes logs from AWS services, like CloudWatch Logs, CloudTrail, and custom apps, to support debugging, auditing, and security.
Cloud cost monitoring
Tracks AWS spending across services, detects cost spikes, and helps optimize usage to stay within budget.
Serverless monitoring
Monitors AWS Lambda functions by tracking invocation counts, durations, errors, and cold starts to ensure smooth execution.
How does AWS monitoring work?
AWS monitoring works by continuously collecting, analyzing, and visualizing data from your AWS environment to help you ensure performance, availability, and security. Here's how it typically works:
Data collection
AWS services generate performance and usage data, including information like CPU usage, network traffic, error logs, and billing info. This data is collected through native tools like Amazon CloudWatch, AWS CloudTrail, and X-Ray, or third-party AWS monitoring tools like Site24x7.
Real-time dashboarding and visualization
The data is visualized through graphs, charts, and custom dashboards that show performance trends, service health, and anomalies at a glance.
Data aggregation
Monitoring tools pull this data into a centralized platform where it's organized by service, region, or resource type.
Alerting and notifications
Thresholds can be set on key metrics (e.g., CPU > 80%, database latency > 200ms), triggering alerts via email, SMS, Slack, or integrations like PagerDuty.
Automated actions
Monitoring tools can also automate remediation—like restarting instances, scaling services, or running Lambda functions when thresholds are breached.
AWS monitoring challenges
Monitoring AWS infrastructure is essential, but it comes with its own set of challenges:
Too many services
AWS offers hundreds of services, making it complex to monitor all interdependencies.
Metric overload
CloudWatch alone can generate thousands of metrics—filtering the noise to find what matters is tricky.
Limited visibility
Native tools offer siloed views—it's tough to get a unified picture of hybrid or multi-cloud setups.
Alert fatigue
Without proper configuration, alerts can overwhelm your team, making it hard to identify critical issues.
Manual configuration
Setting up dashboards, alerts, and logs can be time-consuming if done from scratch.
Dynamic environments
Auto-scaling, short-lived containers, and serverless functions make it hard to track constantly changing resources in real time.
Why choose an AWS monitoring tool?
Using a dedicated AWS monitoring tool provides several benefits:
- Unified view
- Proactive alerts
- In-depth analytics
- Automation
- Custom dashboards and reporting
- Improved troubleshooting
- Cost optimization
How to choose the best AWS monitoring tool
When selecting an AWS monitoring tool, consider the following factors:
- Service coverage: Does it support all the AWS services you're using?
- Real-time monitoring: Can it provide accurate, near-real-time insights and alerts?
- Cost efficiency: Are pricing models clear, and do they scale well with your infrastructure?
- Ease of use: Is it easy to set up and use for your team?
- Integration support: Does it integrate with other tools in your DevOps stack?
- Advanced features: Look for AI-powered insights, anomaly detection, and automated remediation.
Why choose Site24x7?
Site24x7 is a powerful cloud-native monitoring platform that gives you deep visibility into your AWS environment—alongside your entire IT infrastructure.
Comprehensive AWS coverage
Monitor over 80 AWS services, including EC2, RDS, Lambda, ELB, DynamoDB, and S3.
Unified dashboard
View cloud, on-premises, and hybrid infrastructure metrics in one place.
AI-powered monitoring
Detect anomalies and forecast resource needs, along with over 150 best practice recommendations and a robust automation framework.
Smart alerts
Cut through noise with intelligent alerting based on thresholds, dependencies, and baselines.
Seamless integrations
Connect easily with Slack, PagerDuty, ServiceNow, and other tools.