Overview of CloudWatch alarms and dashboards

In the last section, we started gathering custom OS metrics and logs using the CloudWatch agent. Let’s proceed with the technical concepts of CloudWatch alarms and configure CloudWatch for the gathered metrics.

CloudWatch alarms

We gained an understanding of what CloudWatch alarms are and the states in them in the previous chapter.

Let’s understand what an alarm can be used for in observability. CloudWatch alarms will help you measure a defined data point and determine whether it is in an alarm state, OK state, or has insufficient data. Based on the state of the alarm, we can set up notifications and notify the team, group, or a third-party system that will be interested in the application’s state. Additionally, an automated response can be set up to act on the alarm so that auto-remediation activities can be carried out.

Different types of alarms can be set up in CloudWatch. They are as follows:

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