AWS Certified DevOps Engineer – ProfessionalMonitoring and LoggingEasy
A DevOps team is responsible for a critical application running on Amazon EC2 instances. They need to collect detailed operating system-level metrics, such as memory utilization, disk I/O, and process-level metrics, and send them to Amazon CloudWatch for monitoring and alarming. The solution must be cost-effective and easy to deploy across a fleet of instances.
- AUtilize AWS Systems Manager Agent (SSM Agent) to collect all required OS metrics and forward them to CloudWatch.
- BInstall and configure the CloudWatch agent on each EC2 instance to collect custom metrics.
- CEnable detailed monitoring for the EC2 instances in the AWS Management Console to gather all OS-level metrics automatically.
- DDevelop custom scripts on each EC2 instance to periodically collect metrics and push them to CloudWatch using the AWS CLI.
Show answer & explanationAnswer & explanation
Correct answer: B. Install and configure the CloudWatch agent on each EC2 instance to collect custom metrics.
The CloudWatch agent is specifically designed for collecting detailed operating system-level metrics and logs from EC2 instances, on-premises servers, or other sources, and sending them to CloudWatch. It supports a wide range of custom metrics and is highly configurable.
Why the other options are wrong
- A. While SSM Agent can manage instances, it does not directly collect and push detailed custom OS metrics to CloudWatch; the CloudWatch agent is needed for that purpose.
- C. Detailed monitoring for EC2 instances only provides basic metrics like CPU utilization and network I/O, not detailed OS-level metrics like memory, disk I/O, or process-level data.
- D. Custom scripts are labor-intensive to develop, maintain, and scale, and lack the robust features of the CloudWatch agent.
CloudWatch Agent
A unified agent for Amazon CloudWatch that collects metrics and logs from Amazon EC2 instances, on-premises servers, and other sources.
- Collects detailed OS metrics (memory, disk I/O, process)
- Collects application logs
- Supports both Linux and Windows operating systems
- Configurable via JSON files
Memory trick: CloudWatch Agent is the 'Swiss Army Knife' for metrics and logs.