Amazon CloudWatch Reviews

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.

Whenever we launch any instances or use any service we receive default metrics from Amazon CloudWatch. It is easy to track what is happening in the services that we are using. Additionally, it provides metrics logs from servers and what is happening from the infrastructure.

The most valuable feature of Amazon CloudWatch is its ease of use and logs. You do not have to go to each separate system to see the logs, such as Syslog and they are located in one dashboard GUI.

If someone changes some configurations in other tools, such as Grafana, someone has to deep dive to see what has happened. These issues do not happen in Amazon CloudWatch because it is easy to use. It is managed by Amazon AWS.

The dashboard and the UI could improve in Amazon CloudWatch. Additionally, they should focus on visibility inside the servers with AI and machine learning integrations. This would allow users who are using the solution to see what is happening within the system better.

I have used Amazon CloudWatch within the last 12 months.

The stability of the solution is good.

I rate the stability of Amazon CloudWatch a ten out of ten.

The scalability of Amazon CloudWatch is good. We do not have to do anything to scale the solution it is done by the vendor.

We have more than 10,000 people using the solution.

I rate the scalability of Amazon CloudWatch a nine out of ten.

I rate the support of Amazon CloudWatch a ten out of ten.

Positive

The initial setup of Amazon CloudWatch is simple. The deployment of the solution only took minutes.

I rate the initial setup of Amazon CloudWatch a nine out of ten.

If someone is utilizing a limited set of services on Amazon AWS and their application is hosted on Docker or Kubernetes products, they may choose to use an alternative monitoring tool instead of relying on Amazon CloudWatch. However, the developers of Amazon CloudWatch are continually improving the tool, and adding features to address any issues that are not currently available on the cloud version will eventually be incorporated into Amazon CloudWatch. If the infrastructure and the software services are relatively simple I would recommend this solution. The Amazon CloudWatch agent can provide additional metrics, but for those seeking a more visually appealing and understandable approach, different tools may be more suitable.

I rate Amazon CloudWatch an eight out of ten.

I rated the solution an eight out of ten because of its user-friendly interface and the presence of a helpful single dashboard. This solution also offers unique tools, like application insights, which rely on artificial intelligence. This means that regardless of the traffic or type of users accessing our server, the insights provided are based on AI technology. The role of application insights is expected to grow significantly in the coming years as the solution continues to incorporate AI into its functionality. For example, it can provide information on how much memory was occupied by your machine at a particular time.

We're using Amazon CloudWatch to monitor the entire application instances, client application, and backend communication. We're also using the solution to monitor service availability and application development.

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.

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.

I've been using Amazon CloudWatch for three years.

Amazon CloudWatch is a stable solution.

Amazon CloudWatch is a scalable solution, and what I mean by this is that it will hold the logs until the next deployment. If you do the deployment, then all the logs will go, but right now, my company doesn't have any requirement that says the logs should be stored for one year. Amazon CloudWatch may be scalable in the future, but my company has never tried scaling it, and there was never any instance when the solution ran out of memory.

We've never contacted the technical support team for Amazon CloudWatch because we found all the information we need in the AWS documentation.

The initial setup for Amazon CloudWatch was easy. It wasn't difficult. It was easy for my team to develop a microservices web application, but it would still depend on your experience and the way you use the solution. Whatever my team did was completed within one day.

What's were using is the free service of Amazon CloudWatch, so they're not charging us. As for hidden fees, we're not aware of them because we're using what our clients provided us.

We never looked at other options because we decided to go with AWS, which meant going with Amazon CloudWatch as well.

I'm a solution architect who works for a service-based company, so I have different clients. I provide software development services for architecture support for multiple global insurance companies and the bank financial sector. Some companies use Amazon CloudWatch, and I've worked on that solution. I've also provided Azure Managed Grafana services for one of the clients.

There's no particular version for Amazon CloudWatch, but whatever the latest version is, that's what I'd be configuring. I don't focus too much on the version of the solution. It's on AWS Cloud.

My company runs almost forty to fifty projects, mostly using AWS and Amazon CloudWatch, so at least thirty to forty people use the solution.

What I would advise anyone looking into using Amazon CloudWatch is to go for it especially when you're on the AWS environment. To be frank, I've only used Amazon CloudWatch, so I'm recommending it because I've never faced any major challenge with it. I haven't found any new software that's as user-friendly as Amazon CloudWatch. I did have a few problems with it such as log storing, log back up, and log searching, and if I see any other tool that's better than Amazon CloudWatch, then I'll put that up for discussion, but right now, other people also recommend the solution and I know it, so I'm going ahead with Amazon CloudWatch. I'm looking at other solutions in the market, but I'm not comfortable, and I haven't even done a POC with other solutions yet.

I'd compare Amazon CloudWatch with my old style of reading the logs as a developer, and I would rate the solution as seven out of ten. Amazon CloudWatch benefits me by streaming all the logs together, and this means that across all the services, I can search for specific transactions. The solution also has a single dashboard that shows me all services via log steaming.

My company is a service provider, partner, and manager of AWS.

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.

CloudWatch is used to monitor not only for the cloud but also for on-premises services. So, you could think of it as a comprehensive monitoring tool. It's just proprietary monitoring software.

Every time we get an alarm or have an incident, CloudWatch is always there. We use it not only for resources we've spun up in the cloud but also for some of our on-premises resources. There are many advantages you can set up on CloudWatch, so it has improved the overall stability of our environment and financial monitoring. If anything goes out of budget, CloudWatch notifies us.

The most valuable feature is monitoring. 

There is room for improvement in the pricing because they have a premium version, but it's not really a premium version. It's just an enhanced monitoring version, and it can be a bit expensive depending on your usage.

I have used it for five years in a row. I currently use the latest version because it's a SaaS. 

I would rate the stability a ten out of ten. 

I would rate the scalability a ten out of ten.

The initial setup has medium complexity. You have to know what you're looking for.

I have seen an ROI.

I would say to someone who wants to use it, read the recommendations thoroughly before you start using it.

Overall, I would rate the solution a ten out of ten.

The primary use cases are creating a platform for customer experience and customer engagement. This is more about profiling a customer and it is more about using or basically understanding the customer's needs and wants and profiling the data and showing it to a business analyst.

That is pretty straightforward and it is not really meant for a technical user specifically, even a non-technical person can use it. I can put it in a simple term, its simplicity is always there. And it is also in real-time and it has a log analysis feature wherein you can do some insights into the log that is generated. Yeah, but again, this is not a full-fledged monitoring tool. Just like Dynatrace, it comes with various other things like log security and many other features, but the log analysis for the team.

The most valuable feature is the insights are good.

I think something that can be improved are the alerts and alerting mechanism based on no rejects. We want to have it more flexible and that is one of the key things that is required.

I have been using Amazon CloudWatch for the past four to five years now.

The performance is very good and there are no problems accessing it.

We are already on the cloud platform, and we have never experienced any hurdles in terms of performance or scalability. It is always the same as it was at the beginning and we do not feel many differences as we have been growing because that is something that is already scaling at the back end and I think the team is doing it. We are not aware of how they do it, but as end users, we do not feel such difficulties in accessing it.

There are three packages currently we are opting for package one, which basically means that you can only do offline chats or, we have to send any queries offline. But there are three packages in which we can do real-time calls and chats with them to rectify the issues if there are any. So, I can say that from the support perspective with whatever package that we have taken, they are meeting expectations.

The setup is very straightforward and took less than thirty minutes to install.

All of our implementations took place in-house.

The pricing is based on a storage cost plus there is a minimal cost for the usage, but I am not sure about the actual figures, but it is built upon the usage.

I would recommend they have an understanding of the basics of AWS before you start configuring. I would rate Amazon CloudWatch a nine out of ten.

In Amazon CloudWatch, I found their data analytics services most valuable. They are what we are looking for. We are utilizing Kinesis Data Firehose, Logstash Elastic, and CloudWatch Logs. There are many services that we are using, and in our case, we are using three.

An area for improvement that we want to see in Amazon CloudWatch is a more realistic monitoring. It's real-time data stream monitoring we are looking for. Our application is a huge application that will run on AWS. It has a lot of services that are running, so we want to monitor those services, e.g. message review and frontend application in ELB (Elastic Load Balancing).

It's not only monitoring that we want to do. We also want to visualize that monitoring data through dashboards. This is the main reason we plan to try Datadog because in Datadog, we can create a dashboard and we can visualize the log data through the dashboard.

We are not happy about the dashboards. In Amazon CloudWatch, they can fetch all the logs, but the service is not good at delivering the data into the dashboard, plus there's the lack of real data, e.g. in application performance monitoring. We find this product lacking and this is why we want to look for a new service that can cover our needs.

Additional features we would like to see in the future on this product include more API performance features, e.g. application performance monitoring. We also want live dashboards and well-designed workflows.

We also want integrative services, e.g. custom logs we can check, as we are not satisfied with what Amazon CloudWatch currently has. We are looking for more competency on these services: dashboards, real-time monitoring, real user monitoring, and application performance monitoring. We also have more and more mobile apps, so mobile app monitoring is also important.

These are the key areas that people are looking for, and what we'd like to see on this product in the future.

I've been using Amazon CloudWatch for over six years.

Amazon CloudWatch is scalable to some extent.

Technical support for this product is okay. They have a different support standard which they are maintaining. When you pay for premium support, you'll get your issue resolved within two hours. If it is standard support, it takes one to two days. The support you get depends on the type of support you paid for.

This solution is easy to set up. It's not complex. You just need to run the Amazon CloudWatch agent in all the services. Once we install the agent into our services, we'll be able to fetch the log regularly.

I evaluated Nagios.

We're using Amazon CloudWatch. Our clients are using different monitoring services. Some are using Prometheus, while some are using Nagios, but in our platform overall, all the services are located in AWS only.

I have no advice for people looking into using Amazon CloudWatch, but in our case, all our services are running on the AWS platform, so initially we thought of using all their cloud-based native services to save on admin and infrastructure costs, including other connectivities. That was our plan initially, but now client requirements have been more demanding.

The client wants a real-time monitoring solution which is something we are unable to get from the product, so we are looking for a new solution like Datadog, or New Relic, or Prometheus.

My rating for Amazon CloudWatch is a seven out of ten.

I'm a consumer and I'm working in a company like Accenture. It's a service-based organization. It's a MNC (multinational corporation), so it's global and we have multiple clients. These multiple clients have different strategies and they want their applications to be set up in the Cloud. I'm the AWS architect, so I do the solutions and provide solutions for them, e.g. cost optimization, infrastructure optimization, etc.

What clients find most challenging thing in the Cloud is monitoring, so we are looking for a centralized monitoring solution where we can get everything in a single window, but we want a service that's similar to Amazon CloudWatch. We collect data and we need to analyze that log and analyze the metrics, so we create a refined monitoring data, then we publish it by using the Amazon QuickSight dashboard. There are three different services we have to use, so instead of using all these different services, we want to use only one service: a centralized monitoring service to meet all our needs. This is what we are looking to have in the future.

We are primarily using the solution to monitor some of the instances that we have on Amazon for our testing development. It is also the go-to solution used by our organization to track logs and organize metrics across all applications deployed on Amazon Web Services

We are able to, on a real-time basis, understand the capacity utilization and the latency aspects, and, to that extent, we can now know the productivity of the tests and if the development team has increased them in any way. The tool provides an easy integration to monitor and aggregate metrics for any deployment on AWS cloud.

The solution works well as part of an overall Amazon ecosystem.

The solution is easy to set up.

The solution gives us very good real-time data.

Ability to aggregate performance metrics.

Getting  real time alerts on AWS environment.

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. It could also do a much better job of monitoring performance when core AWS services are not used. 

I've been using the solution for about three and a half years now.

The solution is very stable. We haven't had issues with bugs, glitches, or crashes.

The solution scales quite well.

It's the infrastructure team that is using the solution at our organization. It's a team of about seven or eight people and they are using it to monitor the performance of the cloud instances to address any degradation.

The solution is currently being used in 100% of the Amazon instances that we are leveraging. Unless we increase the number of instances on Amazon, we are not planning to scale this product beyond what we are using. We are already using it to the maximum.

Amazon's technical support is a tiered support system. In our case, we have somebody who's available to us and they call us to assist if we need them to.

We didn't previously use a different solution. We've only ever used Amazon.

The solution's initial setup was fairly simple and straightforward. 

The deployment took less than a week. Once we started, our first task was to understand the solution and how we could best leverage it for our environment. Once we had that configured, we then started working towards deploying it.

We worked directly with Amazon. We didn't work with an integrator or reseller.

We have monthly licensing costs. The licenses are probably in the vicinity of about $300 - $350/month.

There are no other costs or hidden fees beyond the licensing.

We didn't evaluate any other solutions. This is because this was the product that was native to Amazon and so this, we knew, would suit us. There was no need for us to look at another product at that time we set this solution up.

We're not using the latest version of the solution. We might be using the latest version minus one.

I would advise other users that they need to understand the solution and what it is capable of doing. From there, they should build out their use case and try to see if the solution will fit into it. It's a good idea to do a POC.

Unless you do a technical evaluation and a proof of concept, you will not be 100% thorough in your preparations before implementing any kind of solution. 

I'd rate the solution eight out of ten.