Monitoring and observability serve as critical pillars for operating AWS cloud environments efficiently at scale. As adoption of AWS continues to accelerate, driven by digital transformation and cloud native application development, implementing robust visibility and control is key.
The Explosive Growth of Public Cloud
Public cloud spend represented $344B in 2021, led by Amazon AWS at 33% market share. This reflects a consistent 30%+ yearly growth:
The need for advanced monitoring capabilities scales in parallel as companies shift more mission critical workloads to the cloud. IDC estimates organizations allocate 13% of cloud budgets solely on visibility through tools and headcount.
What used to be fixed on-prem environments with predictable traffic patterns have been replaced with dynamic global-scale infrastructure and microservices. This level of complexity requires a new approach.
The reactive break-fix mentality no longer works. Engineers must become proactive through comprehensive observability.
Native AWS Monitoring Services
AWS provides several robust default monitoring services:
Amazon CloudWatch: Collects metrics, logs and alarms for infrastructure. Provides the basic backbone for visibility. Used by 79% of AWS customers.
| Service Name | Metrics Collected | Avg Data Points Per Month |
|---|---|---|
| Amazon EC2 | 843 million | 150 billion |
| Amazon DynamoDB | 12 million | 35 billion |
| Amazon RDS | 103 million | 480 billion |
AWS X-Ray: Traces requests as they travel through distributed applications to identify bottlenecks. Integrates with over 35 AWS services.
AWS CloudTrail: Logs API calls to detect unusual provisioning activity and unauthorized changes. Has recorded over 30 billion API calls.
Service Health Dashboard: Real-time view of health and issues for all AWS services by region.
These native capabilities provide tremendous value on their own but have limitations around consolidating data, flexibility with dashboards and setting advanced analytics. This is where specialized tools shine.
Top Third Party AWS Monitoring Tools
Leading third party observability platforms each have unique strengths:
| Tool | Key Capabilities | Sample Customers |
|---|---|---|
| Datadog | Dashboards, APM, Logs, Security, Automation | Samsung, EA, Citrix |
| New Relic | Performance Monitoring, Telemetry Correlation | UPS, Stanford U, USAA |
| Splunk | Log Management, Analysis and Correlation | Slack, Harvard U, Verizon |
| SolarWinds | Hybrid Cloud Management and Monitoring | McDonald‘s, NASA, UPS |
| Nagios | Open Source IT Infrastructure Monitoring | IBM, Cisco, Major Banks |
Based on 2021 market share estimates, Datadog leads the pack with over 60% of the $2.8B AWS monitoring market. However, New Relic maintains strength with enterprise customers. SolarWinds caters more to hybrid environment use cases.
Overall market growth topped out at 20%+ indicating the shift towards observability is still early but accelerating as cloud adoption continues.
Datadog vs. New Relic Head-to-Head
While the entire observability space is expanding rapidly, Datadog and New Relic compete head-on for customers embracing the shift to cloud.
When evaluating the two industry leaders:
| Datadog | New Relic |
|---|---|
| Dashboarding and Visualization | Telemetry Analysis Models |
| Broader Integrations Catalog | Application Performance Focus |
| Logs and Infrastructure Metrics | Tracing Support |
| Security Monitoring | Ease of Getting Started |
Both integrate seamlessly with AWS offerings and represent top choices depending on customer application monitoring requirements. For large scale production traffic analysis – New Relic. For cloud infra and logs – Datadog.
Advanced Monitoring Architectures
Best practice AWS observability design often consists of a hierarchy of capabilities:
Foundational Tier: AWS native – metrics via CloudWatch, trace visibility with XRay, API logs through CloudTrail and account alerts leveraging SNS. Cost effective starting point.
Central Analytics Tier: Aggregate telemetry data across services – metrics, traces, logs, events. Enables flexible analysis, cross-correlation of events, custom dashboarding. This is the home of commercial solutions like Datadog, New Relic and Splunk.
Insight Tier: Surface tailored views for each persona – developers, ops engineers, security analysts, business owners. Leverage perspective relevant alerts and visibility unique to each role.
Automation Tier: Close the loop by triggering auto-remediations based on policies violations. Also auto scale resources based on performance data. Remove humans slowing things down.
Stitching together data flows across the stack allows liberating data from silos while tackling monitoring from multiple lenses.
Common AWS Monitoring Anti-Patterns
While AWS and third party observability tools provide powerful capabilities, companies still struggle to maximize value.
Common misconfigurations include:
- Only using default dashboards views without customization
- Failing to establish baseline metrics tailored to their environment
- Not keeping tools up to date as infrastructure evolves
- Relying on manual processes for alerts and reporting
The best teams approach monitoring as an adaptive capability woven into processes versus one-off deployments.
The Cutting Edge – AIOps and Cloud Native Apps
Modern applications built on AWS often leverage containers, microservices, serverless technologies. Traditional monitoring tactics fall down here.
This drives adoption of cloud native observation approaches like:
Prometheus for container metric collection with native AWS integrations
OpenTelemetry as an open standards alternative to proprietary telemetry
AIOps/ML Analytics to parse signals from exponentially increasing data sources across core AWS services
The future of AWS monitoring is smart, automated and integrates seamlessly into CI/CD pipelines enabling DevOps flows.
Conclusion
As AWS reliance grows across enterprises, no longer is monitoring a secondary concern. Instead, it forms a primary pillar within cloud architectures and culture.
Start by instrumenting robust visibility across core AWS services and infrastructure then grow to commercial platforms over time as budgets allow. Modern tools and design allow seamless integration into automated development processes instead of disjointed addons.
With the right foundation, monitoring and observability in AWS unlocks proactive management otherwise impossible. The total cost of ownership drops dramatically while customer experiences and security increase in parallel.
