Overview

AWS CloudTrail

Stacks294

Followers280

Votes14

AWS X-Ray

Stacks70

Followers132

Votes0

AWS CloudTrail vs AWS X-Ray: What are the differences?

AWS CloudTrail and AWS X-Ray are two services provided by Amazon Web Services (AWS) that help in monitoring and troubleshooting applications running on AWS. While both services have similarities, there are several key differences between the two.

Data Collection: AWS CloudTrail focuses on capturing event history related to AWS API calls made by or on behalf of an AWS account. It helps in auditing and tracking actions that occur within the AWS infrastructure. On the other hand, AWS X-Ray is specifically designed for distributed applications and captures data about requests as they travel through the application and across services boundaries.
Level of Detail: CloudTrail provides detailed information about AWS API calls, including the identity of the caller, time of the API call, request parameters, and response elements. It logs events from all AWS services, providing a comprehensive audit trail. X-Ray collects detailed tracing data about requests and provides insights into how requests flow through the application, including response time, latency, and errors.
Use Case: CloudTrail is primarily used for compliance, auditing, and security purposes. It helps track who did what and when in AWS accounts, aiding in security analyses, resource change tracking, and troubleshooting operational issues. X-Ray, on the other hand, is designed for performance optimization and troubleshooting in distributed applications. It provides a visual representation of the application's architecture and helps identify performance bottlenecks and latencies.
Integration with AWS Services: CloudTrail integrates seamlessly with various AWS services, including AWS Management Console, AWS SDKs, and AWS Command Line Interface (CLI). It can also be integrated with AWS CloudWatch, AWS Config, and AWS Lambda for enhanced monitoring and automation. X-Ray integrates with AWS Lambda, Elastic Beanstalk, EC2, ECS, and other AWS services to automatically trace requests as they pass through these services. It provides valuable insights into how different services contribute to the overall response time of an application.
Visualization and Analytics: CloudTrail provides the ability to search, filter, and visualize the event history using the AWS Management Console, AWS CLI, or APIs. It also supports CloudTrail Insights, which uses machine learning algorithms to detect unusual activity and potential security threats. X-Ray provides a rich set of visualization and analytical tools to understand how requests flow through the application. It allows developers to view traces, analyze performance bottlenecks, and identify trends to optimize application performance.
Pricing Model: CloudTrail pricing is based on the number of events recorded and the volume of data delivered, with a free tier available. Additional costs may be incurred if the CloudTrail data needs to be stored for an extended period. X-Ray pricing is based on the number of traces analyzed, with a free tier available. Additional charges may apply if traces exceed the free tier limits.

In summary, AWS CloudTrail focuses on capturing event history for auditing and security purposes, while AWS X-Ray is designed for distributed application performance optimization and troubleshooting. CloudTrail provides comprehensive auditing capabilities, while X-Ray offers detailed insights into request flow and performance optimization.

Advice on AWS CloudTrail, AWS X-Ray

Jigar

Security Software Engineer at Cisco

Jul 2, 2020

Needs adviceon

AWS IAM

Amazon EC2

Splunk Cloud

We would like to detect unusual config changes that can potentially cause production outage.

Such as, SecurityGroup new allow/deny rule, AuthZ policy change, Secret key/certificate rotation, IP subnet add/drop. The problem is the source of all of these activities is different, i.e., AWS IAM, Amazon EC2, internal prod services, envoy sidecar, etc.

Which of the technology would be best suitable to detect only IMP events (not all activity) from various sources all workload running on AWS and also Splunk Cloud?

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Comments

Detailed Comparison

AWS CloudTrail	AWS X-Ray
With CloudTrail, you can get a history of AWS API calls for your account, including API calls made via the AWS Management Console, AWS SDKs, command line tools, and higher-level AWS services (such as AWS CloudFormation). The AWS API call history produced by CloudTrail enables security analysis, resource change tracking, and compliance auditing. The recorded information includes the identity of the API caller, the time of the API call, the source IP address of the API caller, the request parameters, and the response elements returned by the AWS service.	It helps developers analyze and debug production, distributed applications, such as those built using a microservices architecture. With this, you can understand how your application and its underlying services are performing to identify and troubleshoot the root cause of performance issues and errors. It provides an end-to-end view of requests as they travel through your application, and shows a map of your application’s underlying components.
Increased Visibility- CloudTrail provides increased visibility into your user activity by recording AWS API calls. You can answer questions such as, what actions did a given user take over a given time period? For a given resource, which user has taken actions on it over a given time period? What is the source IP address of a given activity? Which activities failed due to inadequate permissions?;Durable and Inexpensive Log File Storage- CloudTrail uses Amazon S3 for log file storage and delivery, so log files are stored durably and inexpensively. You can use Amazon S3 lifecycle configuration rules to further reduce storage costs. For example, you can define rules to automatically delete old log files or archive them to Amazon Glacier for additional savings.;Easy Administration- CloudTrail is a fully managed service; you simply turn on CloudTrail for your account using the AWS Management Console, the Command Line Interface, or the CloudTrail SDK and start receiving CloudTrail log files in the Amazon Simple Storage Service (Amazon S3) bucket that you specify.;Reliable- CloudTrail continuously transports events from AWS services using a highly available and fault tolerant processing pipeline.;Timely Delivery- CloudTrail typically delivers events within 15 minutes of the API call.;Log File Aggregation- CloudTrail can be configured to aggregate log files across multiple accounts and regions so that log files are delivered to a single bucket. Please refer to the of the AWS CloudTrail User Guide for detailed instructions.;Notifications for Log File Delivery- CloudTrail can be configured to publish a notification for each log file delivered, thus enabling you to automatically take action upon log file delivery. CloudTrail uses the Amazon Simple Notification Service (SNS) for notifications.;Choice of Partner Solutions- Multiple partners including AlertLogic, Boundary, Loggly, Splunk and Sumologic offer integrated solutions to analyze CloudTrail log files. These solutions include features like change tracking, troubleshooting, and security analysis.	End-to-end tracing; AWS Service and Database Integrations; Support for Multiple Languages
Statistics
Stacks 294	Stacks 70
Followers 280	Followers 132
Votes 14	Votes 0
Pros & Cons
Pros 7 Very easy setup 3 Good integrations with 3rd party tools 2 Very powerful 2 Backup to S3	No community feedback yet
Integrations
Boundary Loggly Splunk Cloud	Java MySQL PostgreSQL Node.js

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