Amazon CloudWatch is AWS's monitoring and observability service — collecting metrics, logs, and events from AWS resources and applications, with alarms and dashboards. It's essential for understanding system health, diagnosing issues, and responding to problems.
What CloudWatch provides
METRICS → numerical data over time (CPU, memory, request count, latency, etc.)
→ AWS services publish metrics automatically; you can publish CUSTOM metrics too
LOGS → collect, store, and search application/system logs (CloudWatch Logs)
ALARMS → trigger actions when a metric crosses a threshold (alert, auto-scale, etc.)
DASHBOARDS → visualize metrics/logs in charts
EVENTS (EventBridge) → react to changes/events in your AWS environment
