Moving your systems into cloud doesn’t mean surrendering control over them. Amazon Web Services provides a number of tools to help you monitor your AWS infrastructure.
AWS Tools for Cloud Performance Monitoring
In order to take advantage of the rapid provisioning available in the cloud, you need to monitor your systems to know when you need to grow your resources. AWS offers several tools to help you keep an eye on your cloud’s performance:
• CloudWatch: CloudWatch collects metrics from your AWS resources, providing visibility into CPU, memory, storage, and network utilization.
• AWS Health: Keep an eye on the state of your cloud as well as cloud provider issues affecting your cloud. AWS Health lets you know when AWS is experiencing issues and offers troubleshooting guidelines to help you remediate the problem.
AWS Tools for Cloud Security Monitoring
Maintaining security of your cloud infrastructure is a responsibility you share with the cloud provider. AWS offers several tools to help you track how whether your cloud is securely set up as well as how it is being used:
• CloudTrail: CloudTrail provides event logging. The logs record activity no matter whether it occurs through the management console, APIs, command lines, or other interfaces. This data allows you to analyze user access and identify unauthorized or suspicious activity.
• Macie: There are frequent news stories reporting databases containing personally identifiable information that have been exposed through Amazon. Macie uses machine learning to find sensitive data, allowing you to ensure it is encrypted and protected appropriately.
• GuardDuty: You can’t protect against threats you don’t know about. GuardDuty provides threat detection using machine learning, anomaly detection, and other technique to analyze logs (including those from CloudTrail) to spot potentially malicious behavior.
• VPC Flow Logs: Keep an eye on network traffic and make sure your security group rules are working as intended.
• AWS Config: Improperly configured systems mean your data isn’t as secure it needs to be. AWS Config provides continuous monitoring of system configuration, allowing you to review changes and ensure they align with your standards and AWS best practices.
• Security Hub: The new Security Hub pulls together data from GuardDuty, Macie, and other tools to provide an at-a-glance view of your security status plus the ability to analyze trends.
AWS Tools for Cloud Cost Monitoring
Because of the dynamic nature of cloud and the pay-per-use model, your cloud costs can fluctuate significantly. Keep an eye on cloud spending with these tools:
• Billing and Cost Management: AWS provides a dashboard to keep an eye on your cloud spending. You can consolidate multiple AWS accounts, be alerted if spending exceeds a specified threshold, and analyze your costs. Pull together an efficient and effective cloud monitoring strategy with support from VAST IT Services. Our AWS managed services help you design your cloud, migrate your data there, and make sure the cloud continues to meet your business needs. Contact us to learn more about supporting your cloud with VAST IT Services.
