Interview questions on Monitoring and logging

1. What is the importance of monitoring and logging in AWS?

Monitoring and logging in AWS is important to ensure the health and performance of your systems and applications, detect potential issues, and maintain compliance.

2. What is Amazon CloudWatch and its purpose?

Amazon CloudWatch is a monitoring service in AWS that provides real-time data and insights into the performance, health, and availability of your systems and applications.

3. What is CloudTrail in AWS?

CloudTrail is a logging service in AWS that provides a complete and auditable history of all AWS API calls and events, including changes to AWS resources.

4. How does Amazon CloudWatch monitor the performance of EC2 instances?

Amazon CloudWatch can monitor the performance of EC2 instances by collecting metrics from various sources, such as system and application logs, CloudTrail events, and custom metrics.

5. What is Amazon S3 Inventory and its purpose?

Amazon S3 Inventory is a feature in S3 that provides detailed reports about the contents of your S3 buckets, including object size, age, storage class, and metadata. The purpose is to help you better manage and track changes to your S3 data.

6. What is Amazon CloudWatch Logs Insights and its purpose?

Amazon CloudWatch Logs Insights is a powerful and interactive log analytics tool in CloudWatch that allows you to search, analyze, and visualize log data in real-time. The purpose is to provide real-time insights into the behavior of your systems and applications.

7. What is Amazon CloudWatch Alarms and its purpose?

Amazon CloudWatch Alarms is a feature in CloudWatch that allows you to set alarms for specific conditions, such as high CPU usage or low disk space. The purpose is to notify you of potential issues and take appropriate actions to prevent or mitigate them.

8. What is Amazon CloudWatch Dashboards and its purpose?

Amazon CloudWatch Dashboards is a feature in CloudWatch that provides a centralized view of all your monitoring data, including metrics, logs, and alarms. The purpose is to help you quickly and easily monitor and visualize the performance and health of your systems and applications.

9. What is Amazon CloudWatch Metrics and its purpose?

Amazon CloudWatch Metrics is a feature in CloudWatch that provides real-time data and insights into the performance and health of your systems and applications. The purpose is to help you identify performance trends and potential issues.

10. What is Amazon CloudWatch Events and its purpose?

Amazon CloudWatch Events is a feature in CloudWatch that provides real-time event data and insights into the behavior of your systems and applications. The purpose is to help you detect and respond to changes in your environment.

11. What is Amazon CloudWatch Logs and its purpose?

Amazon CloudWatch Logs is a feature in CloudWatch that provides real-time data and insights into the behavior of your systems and applications by collecting logs from various sources, such as system and application logs, CloudTrail events, and custom logs. The purpose is to provide real-time insights into the behavior and performance of your systems and applications, and to help you troubleshoot and resolve issues.

12. What is Amazon CloudWatch Synthetics and its purpose?

Amazon CloudWatch Synthetics is a feature in CloudWatch that allows you to monitor your applications by creating synthetic transactions and asserting expected outcomes. The purpose is to detect and diagnose issues with your applications, even before your end-users are impacted.

13. Can you use CloudWatch to monitor resources outside of AWS?

Yes, CloudWatch can be used to monitor resources outside of AWS using the CloudWatch Agent or custom scripts.

14. How does CloudWatch store data and what is its retention period?

CloudWatch stores data in Amazon S3 and Amazon Elasticsearch. The retention period for CloudWatch metrics data is 15 months, while the retention period for CloudWatch log data is unlimited by default.

15. Can you customize the frequency of CloudWatch metric data collection?

Yes, you can customize the frequency of CloudWatch metric data collection from 1 minute to 1 hour.

16. How does CloudTrail record AWS API calls?

CloudTrail records AWS API calls by collecting log data from all AWS services, including the API requests, response elements, and request parameters.

17. Can you customize the log data that CloudTrail records?

Yes, you can customize the log data that CloudTrail records by defining trails and selecting the services and events you want to record.

18. What is Amazon S3 access logging and its purpose?

Amazon S3 access logging is a feature in S3 that enables you to log all requests made to your S3 buckets and objects. The purpose is to provide auditing and analysis of access patterns, to troubleshoot issues, and to enforce security policies.

19. What is Amazon S3 Inventory and its purpose?

Amazon S3 Inventory is a feature in S3 that provides detailed reports about the contents of your S3 buckets, including object size, age, storage class, and metadata. The purpose is to help you better manage and track changes to your S3 data.

20. What is the difference between CloudTrail and CloudWatch Logs?

CloudTrail is a logging service that provides a complete and auditable history of all AWS API calls and events, while CloudWatch Logs is a real-time log analytics tool that provides insights into the behavior and performance of your systems and applications.

21. How does CloudWatch Alarms work and what are the steps involved in creating an alarm?

CloudWatch Alarms work by monitoring a specific metric or log and triggering an action if the metric or log crosses a defined threshold. The steps involved in creating an alarm are:

• Choose the metric or log you want to monitor.
• Define the threshold values that trigger an action.
• Choose the action to be taken when the alarm is triggered, such as sending a notification or automatically starting or stopping an EC2 instance.

22. What is Amazon CloudWatch Metric Math and its purpose?

Amazon CloudWatch Metric Math is a feature in CloudWatch that allows you to perform mathematical operations on CloudWatch metrics to create custom metrics. The purpose is to provide insights into complex relationships between metrics, and to help you analyze your data in new ways.

23. What is the Amazon CloudWatch Logs Insights Query Language and its purpose?

The Amazon CloudWatch Logs Insights Query Language is a query language for searching and analyzing log data in CloudWatch Logs Insights. The purpose is to provide a flexible and powerful way to search, analyze, and visualize log data in real-time.

24. What is Amazon CloudWatch Metric Filter and its purpose?

Amazon CloudWatch Metric Filter is a feature in CloudWatch that allows you to transform, extract, or manipulate log data from CloudWatch Logs and create new custom metrics. The purpose is to help you quickly find the information you need, and to enable you to perform complex analysis and troubleshooting of your systems and applications.

25. What is the difference between CloudWatch Logs and CloudWatch Logs Insights?

CloudWatch Logs is a log storage and management service, while CloudWatch Logs Insights is a log analytics and search tool that allows you to search and visualize your log data in real-time.

26. What is the Amazon CloudWatch Dashboards and its purpose?

Amazon CloudWatch Dashboards is a feature in CloudWatch that allows you to create custom dashboards to visualize and monitor key metrics and logs from multiple AWS services and resources in a single place. The purpose is to provide a centralized and real-time view of the health and performance of your systems and applications.

27. What is Amazon CloudWatch Event and its purpose?

Amazon CloudWatch Event is a service that allows you to set up rules to route events from AWS services and other AWS resources to other services, such as AWS Lambda, Amazon SNS, and CloudWatch Logs. The purpose is to help you automate your workflows and respond quickly to events in real-time.

28. How does Amazon CloudWatch Event work with AWS Lambda?

Amazon CloudWatch Event works with AWS Lambda by triggering a Lambda function when a specified event occurs, such as a change in an EC2 instance status or a new object uploaded to S3. This allows you to automate your workflows and respond quickly to events in real-time.

29. What is Amazon CloudWatch Event Bridges and its purpose?

Amazon CloudWatch Event Bridges is a new service that allows you to manage and centralize your event routing rules, and to connect your AWS services and resources with your applications, services, and other AWS accounts. The purpose is to help you build and operate event-driven applications with ease, and to make it easier to discover, understand, and respond to events.

30. Can you monitor and log multiple AWS accounts with CloudWatch and CloudTrail?

Yes, you can monitor and log multiple AWS accounts with CloudWatch and CloudTrail by using AWS Organizations, and by setting up cross-account access and permissions. This allows you to centralize and consolidate your monitoring and logging data from multiple AWS accounts, and to simplify the management of your AWS environment.