What are CloudWatch Logs?
CloudWatch Logs is a feature of AWS CloudWatch that allows you to collect, monitor, store, and analyze logs from various AWS resources, applications, and on-premises servers. It helps in troubleshooting, monitoring system and application behavior, and maintaining security and compliance by tracking log data.
CloudWatch Logs allows you to centralize the management of logs, making it easier to analyze and identify issues within your infrastructure, applications, and services.
Key Features of CloudWatch Logs :
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Log Collection
- CloudWatch Logs can collect log data from multiple sources including:
- AWS services (EC2, Lambda, CloudTrail, etc.)
- Custom applications (e.g., web servers, databases)
- On-premises servers (via the CloudWatch Logs agent)
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Log Streams
- Logs are organized into log streams, where each log stream represents a sequence of log events coming from a specific source, such as an EC2 instance or an AWS Lambda function.
- For example, each EC2 instance can have its own log stream for storing system logs.
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Log Groups
- Logs are further organized into log groups, which are collections of log streams that share the same retention, monitoring, and access control settings.
- Log groups help to logically organize log data for easier management, particularly when monitoring multiple services or applications.
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Log Retention and Storage
- CloudWatch Logs provides configurable retention policies. You can set the retention period for your logs, ranging from a few days to an indefinite period.
- By default, logs are stored indefinitely, but you can configure automatic deletion after a set period (e.g., 30 days) to reduce storage costs.
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Real-Time Monitoring
- CloudWatch Logs provides real-time monitoring of log data. You can stream logs as they are created and analyze them in near real-time.
- This is particularly useful for quickly identifying errors or unusual behavior in your application or infrastructure.
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CloudWatch Logs Insights
- CloudWatch Logs Insights is an interactive log analytics feature that allows you to query log data in a powerful and efficient way. It uses a custom query language to perform searches, aggregations, and analytics on logs.
- With Logs Insights, you can quickly find patterns or anomalies in logs, making troubleshooting much faster.
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Log Filters
- You can create custom metric filters to extract specific patterns from your logs and convert them into CloudWatch metrics. This allows you to generate CloudWatch metrics based on specific log events (e.g., counting occurrences of a specific error message).
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Integration with Other AWS Services
- CloudWatch Logs can be integrated with other AWS services for automation and enhanced functionality:
- CloudWatch Alarms: Set up alarms on log data to be notified when specific log patterns occur (e.g., error messages or specific events).
- AWS Lambda: Trigger Lambda functions based on log events, such as processing log data in real-time.
- Amazon Kinesis: Stream log data to other services for further processing or analytics.
