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Amazon CloudWatch pros and cons

4.0 out of 5
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Pros & Cons summary

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Prominent pros & cons

PROS

Amazon CloudWatch provides real-time data and detailed metrics which optimize cloud utilization and monitor instances effectively.
Setting up Amazon CloudWatch is easy and includes features like alarms and event-trigger functions, enhancing operational responsiveness.
Amazon CloudWatch supports comprehensive monitoring from CPU and memory metrics to application performance, offering valuable insights.
Amazon CloudWatch offers cost-effective monitoring solutions and seamless integration with AWS, making it a preferred choice for resource management.
Amazon CloudWatch automates critical operations such as scaling based on specific metrics, facilitating efficient resource management.

CONS

The drill-down aspect on the dashboard needs improvement. Users get a high-level overview, but details become unclear when drilling down.
It lacks certain features: real-time data stream monitoring, application performance monitoring, mobile app monitoring, and live dashboards.
Monitoring application performance from Amazon CloudWatch is limited, requiring third-party tools.
Log streaming is slow, taking up to twenty-four hours for scanning instead of one hour.
The alerts and alerting mechanism need to be more flexible.
 

Amazon CloudWatch Pros review quotes

SB
Jul 25, 2022
CloudWatch immediately hooks up and connects to the KPIs and all the metrics.
Prathap G - PeerSpot reviewer
Sep 13, 2022
What my company likes best about Amazon CloudWatch is that it's on AWS. My team also likes it for its log feature. As the solution is on AWS, it also has good pricing and resource availability, plus it's what clients choose. My company also chose AWS for Forge ECS, and at the time, there was a need for the log features provided by Amazon CloudWatch, so it's the solution my team went with.
NR
Mar 9, 2020
Most of it's around optimizing utilization, their cloud utilization. They're making sure that they're getting the most out of their in-cloud environments and their instances. Making sure that there's no strange behavior in the environment.
Learn what your peers think about Amazon CloudWatch. Get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions. Updated: November 2024.
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Prakash-Kumar - PeerSpot reviewer
Jun 17, 2024
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.
RomilShah - PeerSpot reviewer
Oct 13, 2022
What I found most valuable in Amazon CloudWatch is that it gives you detailed information, which I found helpful because it can even provide you with data for the past one minute, which is quite granular. That was what helped me most in terms of finding the root causes. Task automation is another valuable feature of Amazon CloudWatch.
Santosh Devara - PeerSpot reviewer
Jan 24, 2022
Setting up this product was easy. I found data analytics as its most valuable feature.
it_user842139 - PeerSpot reviewer
Jul 20, 2020
The solution gives us very good real-time data.
JR
Jun 29, 2022
Our team finds it overall quite useful.
Shaamil Ashraff - PeerSpot reviewer
Jun 3, 2022
We have found the pricing to be reasonable.
Rasanpreet Singh - PeerSpot reviewer
Sep 25, 2023
It offers direct integrations with various storage providers, making it convenient to push logs from CloudWatch to these external platforms.
 

Amazon CloudWatch Cons review quotes

SB
Jul 25, 2022
It would be beneficial for CloudWatch to provide an API interface and some kind of custom configuration.
Prathap G - PeerSpot reviewer
Sep 13, 2022
I found several areas for improvement in Amazon CloudWatch. First is that it's tough to track issues and find out where it's going wrong. The process takes longer. For example, if I get an exception error, I read the logs, search, go to AWS Cloud, then to the groups to find the keyword to determine what's wrong. Another area for improvement in Amazon CloudWatch is that it's slow in terms of log streaming. It requires an entire twenty-four hours for scanning, rather than just one hour. This issue can be solved with Elasticsearch streaming with Kibana, but it requires a lot of development effort and integration with Kibana or Splunk, and this also means I need a separate developer and software technical stack to do the indexing and streaming to Kibana. It's a manual effort that you need to do properly, so log streaming should be improved in Amazon CloudWatch. The AWS support person should also have a better understanding of the logs in Amazon CloudWatch. What I'd like added to the solution is a more advanced search function, particularly one that can tell you more information or special information. Right now, the search function is difficult to use because it only gives you limited data. For example, I got an error message saying that the policy wasn't created. I only know the amount the customer paid for the policy, the mobile number, and the customer name, but if I use those details, the information won't show up on the logs. I need to enter more details, so that's the type of fuzzy matching Amazon CloudWatch won't provide. If this type of search functionality is provided, it will be very helpful for businesses and companies that provide professional services to customers, like ours.
NR
Mar 9, 2020
Better reporting is always something needed. That could be an answer to just about anything. But you always want better reporting, better dashboards, things that are just more dynamic and more accessible.
Learn what your peers think about Amazon CloudWatch. Get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions. Updated: November 2024.
816,406 professionals have used our research since 2012.
Prakash-Kumar - PeerSpot reviewer
Jun 17, 2024
It's not very intuitive. It doesn't have drag-and-drop functionality to trigger actions from notifications.
RomilShah - PeerSpot reviewer
Oct 13, 2022
What would make Amazon CloudWatch better is if it includes more on-site checks, particularly status checks on the CPU, network input/output, etc. It would also be helpful if there's built-in swap space, disk, and memory monitoring in Amazon CloudWatch because, at the moment, my team has to configure it manually through a shell script.
Santosh Devara - PeerSpot reviewer
Jan 24, 2022
This product lacks some features: real-time data stream monitoring, application performance monitoring, mobile app monitoring, and live dashboards. Its workflows also need improvement.
it_user842139 - PeerSpot reviewer
Jul 20, 2020
The drill-down aspect on the dashboard of the solution needs improvement. We get a very good high-level overview, but when we drill down, it becomes a little less clear. We have given this feedback to AWS as well and hope they will improve this in the future.
JR
Jun 29, 2022
We'd like the interface to be as easy as Datadog.
Shaamil Ashraff - PeerSpot reviewer
Jun 3, 2022
I do not know whether or not CloudWatch can be integrated with on-prem services.
Rasanpreet Singh - PeerSpot reviewer
Sep 25, 2023
There could be further enhancements through CloudWatch's partnerships.