CloudWatch vs CloudTrail
- CloudWatch focuses on monitoring AWS services and resources' health and performance.
- CloudTrail logs all actions performed within your AWS environment, tracking who did what.
CloudWatch:
What is happening on AWS?and logging all the events for a particular service or application. CloudTrail:Who did what on AWS?and the API calls to the service or resource.
AWS CloudWatch:
A monitoring service for AWS resources and applications.
- Collects and tracks metrics (e.g., CPU usage, memory, latency).
- Supports log collection from applications and AWS services.
- Allows setting alarms and triggering automated actions.
- Offers basic monitoring (5 min) and detailed monitoring (1 min).
AWS CloudTrail
A logging service for governance, compliance, and auditing.
- Records API activity across AWS accounts and services.
- Logs actions from AWS Console, SDKs, CLI, and services.
- Stores logs in S3 buckets or CloudWatch Logs for long-term retention.
- Helps track who made changes to AWS infrastructure.
- Free management event logging; data event logging incurs charges.
Summary
- Use CloudWatch for monitoring application and infrastructure performance.
- Use CloudTrail for tracking API activity, security audits, and compliance.
- Both services are enabled by default, but detailed monitoring and additional logging may incur extra costs.