AWS Config vs Skylight

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AWS Config

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98
+ 1
6
Skylight

108
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+ 1
51
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AWS Config vs Skylight: What are the differences?

Introduction:

AWS Config and Skylight are two cloud services that provide configuration auditing and monitoring capabilities. While they both aim to help users ensure compliance and security of their cloud resources, there are several key differences between the two.

  1. Architecture and Deployment:

AWS Config is a fully managed service provided by Amazon Web Services(AWS). It allows users to assess, audit, and evaluate the configurations of their AWS resources. AWS Config collects and records configuration changes, and provides detailed information for resource history and change notifications. On the other hand, Skylight is a third-party cloud monitoring platform that offers real-time observability and security for infrastructure as code (IaC). Skylight's architecture involves deploying sensors within a user's environment to collect and analyze metadata across multiple cloud platforms.

  1. Supported Cloud Platforms:

AWS Config is tailored specifically for AWS services and can be used to monitor resources deployed within the AWS ecosystem. It supports a wide range of AWS resources including EC2 instances, S3 buckets, RDS instances, IAM roles, and more. While Skylight can also work with AWS, it supports multiple cloud platforms including AWS, Google Cloud Platform(GCP), and Microsoft Azure. This multi-cloud support makes Skylight a suitable choice for organizations that have a multi-cloud infrastructure.

  1. Configuration Monitoring vs. Runtime Monitoring:

AWS Config primarily focuses on configuration monitoring, providing insights into the historical and current state of AWS resource configurations. It enables users to assess how the configurations have changed over time, identify compliance violations, and troubleshoot issues related to resource configurations. In contrast, Skylight offers runtime monitoring capabilities by actively collecting and analyzing data from infrastructure deployments as they are running. Skylight can detect and alert on misconfigurations, vulnerabilities, and potential security risks in real-time.

  1. Remediation and Automation:

AWS Config provides users with insights and recommendations regarding configuration best practices and security standards. It also supports rule-based compliance checks and provides remediation options for non-compliant resources. Users can integrate AWS Config with AWS Systems Manager Automation to automate remediation tasks based on the identified configuration changes. Skylight, on the other hand, focuses on providing alerts and visibility into the runtime behavior of cloud resources. While Skylight offers integrations with tools like Terraform and Ansible for configuration management, it does not have built-in remediation capabilities.

  1. Cost Structure:

AWS Config has its own pricing structure based on the number of configuration items recorded and the number of rules evaluated. Users need to consider the costs associated with AWS Config before enabling it for their AWS accounts. Conversely, Skylight has a subscription-based pricing model which includes a fixed fee per monitored cloud account. The pricing is typically determined by the number of cloud accounts and the volume of monitored resources.

  1. Vendor Lock-in:

As AWS Config is a service provided by AWS, it may have dependencies and integrations with other AWS offerings. Users relying heavily on AWS services may find it easier to use AWS Config due to its seamless integration with the AWS ecosystem. Skylight, being a third-party solution, offers a more agnostic approach and can be used across multiple cloud platforms, reducing the risk of vendor lock-in.

In summary, AWS Config and Skylight differ in terms of their architecture, supported cloud platforms, focus on configuration monitoring vs. runtime monitoring, remediation capabilities, cost structure, and vendor lock-in. Understanding these differences can help organizations choose the right cloud monitoring solution based on their specific requirements and cloud infrastructure setup.

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Pros of AWS Config
Pros of Skylight
  • 4
    Backed by Amazon
  • 2
    One stop solution
  • 11
    Beautiful UI
  • 8
    Sort by 'agony' - lists low hanging fruit fixes
  • 8
    Made by ember.js and rails core team members
  • 7
    Actionable analytics with concrete numbers
  • 6
    Free tier
  • 4
    Shows you repeat db queries
  • 3
    Great for production use
  • 2
    Setup in a minute
  • 1
    Weekly email w/performance trends
  • 1
    Full MVC profile

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Cons of AWS Config
Cons of Skylight
  • 2
    Not user friendly
  • 1
    Comparing different timeframes is difficult

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What is 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.

What is Skylight?

Skylight is a smart profiler for your Rails apps that visualizes request performance across all of your servers.

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What companies use AWS Config?
What companies use Skylight?
See which teams inside your own company are using AWS Config or Skylight.
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What tools integrate with AWS Config?
What tools integrate with Skylight?
    No integrations found
    What are some alternatives to AWS Config and Skylight?
    AWS CloudTrail
    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.
    Amazon CloudWatch
    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.
    Stackdriver
    Google Stackdriver provides powerful monitoring, logging, and diagnostics. It equips you with insight into the health, performance, and availability of cloud-powered applications, enabling you to find and fix issues faster.
    DigitalOcean Monitoring
    Collect metrics for visibility, monitor Droplet performance, and receive alerts when problems arise in your infrastructure – at no additional cost.
    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.
    See all alternatives