AWS Certified SysOps Administrator – AssociateMonitoring, Logging, and RemediationEasy
A SysOps team manages a fleet of EC2 instances and needs to collect custom application metrics (e.g., number of active users, queue depth) and logs from these instances. They require a single, unified agent that can send both metrics and logs to AWS CloudWatch. Which agent should they deploy?
- AAWS Systems Manager Agent (SSM Agent)
- BThe legacy CloudWatch Agent
- CAmazon Kinesis Agent
- DThe unified CloudWatch Agent
Show answer & explanationAnswer & explanation
Correct answer: D. The unified CloudWatch Agent
The unified CloudWatch Agent is designed to collect both system-level metrics (e.g., CPU, memory, disk) and custom application metrics, as well as logs from EC2 instances and on-premises servers, and send them to Amazon CloudWatch. It consolidates the functionality of the older CloudWatch Logs Agent and CloudWatch Monitoring Scripts.
Why the other options are wrong
- A. SSM Agent allows Systems Manager to manage instances, but it doesn't directly collect and send custom application metrics or logs to CloudWatch logs/metrics.
- B. The legacy CloudWatch Agent primarily collected logs and is now largely superseded by the unified agent for combined metric and log collection.
- C. Kinesis Agent is used to send data to Kinesis services (Data Streams, Firehose), not directly to CloudWatch Logs or Metrics for unified collection.
Unified CloudWatch Agent
The unified CloudWatch Agent collects both system-level metrics, custom application metrics, and log files from EC2 instances and on-premises servers, sending them to Amazon CloudWatch.
- Collects system and custom metrics.
- Collects log files.
- Consolidates older agents.
- Recommended for comprehensive monitoring.
Memory trick: The 'Unified' agent brings metrics and logs together to the Cloud.