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Getting Started with AWS CloudWatch

Welcome to AWS CloudWatch​

When something breaks in production, the first question is always "what do the logs say?" CloudWatch is AWS's built-in observability service — it collects logs from Lambda, EC2, RDS, and virtually every other AWS service, stores metrics, fires alarms when thresholds are crossed, and lets you build dashboards to visualize system health.

CloudWatch is the first place to look when something goes wrong on AWS. Learning to navigate it efficiently is a fundamental ops skill.

What You'll Learn​

  • Log groups and log streams — how CloudWatch organizes logs from different services
  • Lambda logs — every console.log in your function automatically appears in CloudWatch
  • EC2 logs — installing the CloudWatch agent to ship application and system logs
  • Metrics — CPU utilization, memory, error rates, and custom application metrics
  • Alarms — triggering notifications (email, SMS, Lambda) when a metric crosses a threshold
  • Dashboards — combining multiple metrics and logs into a single health overview
  • Log Insights — querying logs with a SQL-like syntax to find errors fast
  • Retention policies — controlling how long logs are kept (and what it costs)

Prerequisites​

  • An AWS account with running services (Lambda, EC2, or RDS)
  • Basic understanding of what you want to monitor