12 Weeks AWS Workshop Challenge
Week Twelve: Observability
The final topic to conclude the 12 Weeks AWS Workshop Challenge is *drumroll* Observability! And you know what? It’s actually the perfect ending because after configuring all your resources, services and applications on AWS, you will need to configure systems and mechanisms to monitor, log and troubleshoot your environments in near real time.…
…This, is where observability comes in.
Observability
Observability allows you to use tools that will help you meaningfully understand and remediate your environments by monitoring relevant metrics, creating logs that can be analyzed, and setting up troubleshooting & debugging systems, and creating events and alarms that alert you about your system.
Basic Observability Tools on AWS
The ‘Three Pillars of Observability” are considered to be Metrics, Logs & Traces. You can configure a simple observability system on AWS by integrating your services with Amazon CloudWatch, AWS CloudTrail, AWS X-Ray and Amazon OpenSearch.
Amazon CloudWatch: CloudWatch is an observability tool that you can use to monitor you applications.
AWS CloudTrail: CloudTrail is an observability tool that provides you with logs of your API activity.
AWS X-Ray: X-Ray is an observability tool that has tracing and debugging features.
Amazon OpenSearch: OpenSearch is an observability tool that can provide real time analytics.
Other Observability Services on AWS
AWS has a quite a great deal of observability resources to handle and take care of not only your services, but your accounts and users. If you want to view all the services you can utilize in your observability systems you can:
- Navigate to your AWS Management Console.
- On the top left corner, click on the Services button.
- Select Management and Governance on the left side of the drop down menu.
- Observe the multitude of services you can leverage for observability, management & governance.
As I am writing this, I counted a whopping 27 services under Management and Governance, so you know that AWS has your back when it comes to observability. Remember to always use the right tool for the job, so really analyze the observability tools offered by AWS and find the most appropriate one and configure it appropriately with relevant metrics that need to be observed and acted upon.
Conclusion
In the future, Observability should always be a part of whatever you configure. Integrate your services with the appropriate monitoring, logging and debugging tools, so that you can keep up with your environment and remediate any issues timeously.
Blog Post Summary
Theory
Introduction to Observability Tools on AWS.
Practical
Viewing Observability Tools on the AWS Management Console.
