Amazon CloudWatch vs Amazon Kinesis

Overview

Amazon CloudWatch

Stacks12.0K

Followers8.2K

Votes214

Amazon Kinesis

Stacks795

Followers604

Votes9

Amazon CloudWatch vs Amazon Kinesis: What are the differences?

Introduction

In this article, we will explore the key differences between Amazon CloudWatch and Amazon Kinesis. Both services are offered by Amazon Web Services (AWS) and are widely used for managing and monitoring data in the cloud.

Data Ingestion and Purpose: Amazon CloudWatch is primarily used for monitoring resources and applications in AWS. It collects and tracks metrics, monitors log files, and sets alarms. On the other hand, Amazon Kinesis is designed for real-time streaming and processing of large amounts of data from various sources such as IoT devices, clickstreams, or application logs.
Data Persistence: Amazon CloudWatch retains monitoring data for a limited period of time, typically a few weeks. It provides historical data for analysis and troubleshooting purposes. In contrast, Amazon Kinesis is more focused on real-time processing and does not store data persistently by default. However, it can integrate with other AWS services like Amazon S3 or Amazon Redshift for data storage and further analysis.
Scalability and Throughput: Amazon CloudWatch can handle high-frequency monitoring data with low-latency requirements. It can scale horizontally to accommodate increased monitoring needs. On the other hand, Amazon Kinesis is built for handling massive amounts of streaming data. It can support higher throughput and can handle large-scale data ingestion and processing.
Data Processing and Analytics: While Amazon CloudWatch provides basic analytics and insights based on monitoring data, it does not offer advanced stream processing capabilities. In contrast, Amazon Kinesis enables real-time processing of streaming data through integration with other AWS services like AWS Lambda or Amazon Kinesis Data Analytics. This allows for real-time analytics, complex transformations, and near real-time response mechanisms.
Use Cases: Amazon CloudWatch is commonly used for monitoring AWS resources, applications, and services. It is widely adopted for system monitoring, performance optimization, and resource utilization analysis. On the other hand, Amazon Kinesis is often utilized for real-time analytics, data streaming, Clickstream analysis, and machine learning applications.
Pricing: The pricing model for Amazon CloudWatch is based on the number of metrics collected, alarms created, and custom events. There may be additional costs for storage of logs and data. Amazon Kinesis pricing is based on the number of shard hours, data ingestion, data analytics, and data transfer. Costs can vary based on the ingestion rate, data retention, and the number of active shards.

In summary, Amazon CloudWatch is primarily focused on monitoring and managing resources, applications, and services in AWS, while Amazon Kinesis is designed for real-time streaming, ingestion, and processing of large amounts of data from various sources. CloudWatch is more suited for system monitoring and resource optimization, while Kinesis is more suitable for real-time analytics and streaming data processing use cases.

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Detailed Comparison

Amazon CloudWatch	Amazon Kinesis
It helps you gain system-wide visibility into resource utilization, application performance, and operational health. It retrieve your monitoring data, view graphs to help take automated action based on the state of your cloud environment.	Amazon Kinesis can collect and process hundreds of gigabytes of data per second from hundreds of thousands of sources, allowing you to easily write applications that process information in real-time, from sources such as web site click-streams, marketing and financial information, manufacturing instrumentation and social media, and operational logs and metering data.
Basic Monitoring for Amazon EC2 instances: ten pre-selected metrics at five-minute frequency, free of charge.;Detailed Monitoring for Amazon EC2 instances: seven pre-selected metrics at one-minute frequency, for an additional charge.;Amazon EBS volumes: eight pre-selected metrics at five-minute frequency, free of charge.;Elastic Load Balancers: thirteen pre-selected metrics at one-minute frequency, free of charge.;Amazon RDS DB instances: thirteen pre-selected metrics at one-minute frequency, free of charge.;Amazon SQS queues: eight pre-selected metrics at five-minute frequency, free of charge.;Amazon SNS topics: four pre-selected metrics at five-minute frequency, free of charge.;Amazon ElastiCache nodes: twenty-nine pre-selected metrics at one-minute frequency, free of charge.;Amazon DynamoDB tables: seven pre-selected metrics at five-minute frequency, free of charge.;AWS Storage Gateways: eleven pre-selected gateway metrics and five pre-selected storage volume metrics at five-minute frequency, free of charge.;Amazon Elastic MapReduce job flows: twenty-three pre-selected metrics at five-minute frequency, free of charge.;Auto Scaling groups: seven pre-selected metrics at one-minute frequency, optional and charged at standard pricing.;Estimated charges on your AWS bill: you can also choose to enable metrics to monitor your AWS charges. The number of metrics depends on the AWS products and services that you use, and these metrics are free of charge. Learn more about this option.	Real-time Processing- Amazon Kinesis enables you to collect and analyze information in real-time, allowing you to answer questions about the current state of your data, from inventory levels to stock trade frequencies, rather than having to wait for an out-of-date report;Easy to use- You can create a new stream, set the throughput requirements, and start streaming data quickly and easily. Amazon Kinesis automatically provisions and manages the storage required to reliably and durably collect your data stream;High throughput. Elastic.- Amazon Kinesis seamlessly scales to match the data throughput rate and volume of your data, from megabytes to terabytes per hour. Amazon Kinesis will scale up or down based on your needs;Integrate with Amazon S3, Amazon Redshift, and Amazon DynamoDB- With Amazon Kinesis, you can reliably collect, process, and transform all of your data in real-time before delivering it to data stores of your choice, where it can be used by existing or new applications. Connectors enable integration with Amazon S3, Amazon Redshift, and Amazon DynamoDB;Build Kinesis Applications- Amazon Kinesis provides developers with client libraries that enable the design and operation of real-time data processing applications. Just add the Amazon Kinesis Client Library to your Java application and it will be notified when new data is available for processing;Low Cost- Amazon Kinesis is cost-efficient for workloads of any scale. You can pay as you go, and you’ll only pay for the resources you use. You can get started by provisioning low throughput streams, and only pay a low hourly rate for the throughput you need
Statistics
Stacks 12.0K	Stacks 795
Followers 8.2K	Followers 604
Votes 214	Votes 9
Pros & Cons
Pros 76 Monitor aws resources 46 Zero setup 30 Detailed Monitoring 23 Backed by Amazon 19 Auto Scaling groups Cons 2 Poor Search Capabilities	Pros 9 Scalable Cons 3 Cost

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Stackdriver

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Google Cloud Dataflow

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AWS Config

AWS Config is a fully managed service that provides you with an AWS resource inventory, configuration history, and configuration change notifications to enable security and governance. With AWS Config you can discover existing AWS resources, export a complete inventory of your AWS resources with all configuration details, and determine how a resource was configured at any point in time. These capabilities enable compliance auditing, security analysis, resource change tracking, and troubleshooting.

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DigitalOcean Monitoring

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Amazon Kinesis Firehose

Amazon Kinesis Firehose is the easiest way to load streaming data into AWS. It can capture and automatically load streaming data into Amazon S3 and Amazon Redshift, enabling near real-time analytics with existing business intelligence tools and dashboards you’re already using today.

stts

With a click of the menubar icon, you can see the status of your favorite services. You can also be notified when a service goes down or gets restored. stts is designed to be unobtrusive, only giving you the information you need and allowing you to access the status page with a single click.

Related Comparisons

Amazon CloudWatch vs Amazon Kinesis: What are the differences?

Introduction

Data Ingestion and Purpose: Amazon CloudWatch is primarily used for monitoring resources and applications in AWS. It collects and tracks metrics, monitors log files, and sets alarms. On the other hand, Amazon Kinesis is designed for real-time streaming and processing of large amounts of data from various sources such as IoT devices, clickstreams, or application logs.
Data Persistence: Amazon CloudWatch retains monitoring data for a limited period of time, typically a few weeks. It provides historical data for analysis and troubleshooting purposes. In contrast, Amazon Kinesis is more focused on real-time processing and does not store data persistently by default. However, it can integrate with other AWS services like Amazon S3 or Amazon Redshift for data storage and further analysis.
Scalability and Throughput: Amazon CloudWatch can handle high-frequency monitoring data with low-latency requirements. It can scale horizontally to accommodate increased monitoring needs. On the other hand, Amazon Kinesis is built for handling massive amounts of streaming data. It can support higher throughput and can handle large-scale data ingestion and processing.
Data Processing and Analytics: While Amazon CloudWatch provides basic analytics and insights based on monitoring data, it does not offer advanced stream processing capabilities. In contrast, Amazon Kinesis enables real-time processing of streaming data through integration with other AWS services like AWS Lambda or Amazon Kinesis Data Analytics. This allows for real-time analytics, complex transformations, and near real-time response mechanisms.
Use Cases: Amazon CloudWatch is commonly used for monitoring AWS resources, applications, and services. It is widely adopted for system monitoring, performance optimization, and resource utilization analysis. On the other hand, Amazon Kinesis is often utilized for real-time analytics, data streaming, Clickstream analysis, and machine learning applications.
Pricing: The pricing model for Amazon CloudWatch is based on the number of metrics collected, alarms created, and custom events. There may be additional costs for storage of logs and data. Amazon Kinesis pricing is based on the number of shard hours, data ingestion, data analytics, and data transfer. Costs can vary based on the ingestion rate, data retention, and the number of active shards.

Amazon CloudWatch vs Amazon Kinesis

Overview

Amazon CloudWatch vs Amazon Kinesis: What are the differences?