Monitoring and Observability Baseline
Overview
The AWS Partner has methodology, process and relevant tooling experience to:
- Define, recommend, track key performance indicators (KPIs) and service levels based on customer's business and operational needs.
- Identify, gather, analyze metrics, events, logs and traces to measure the health of the overall workload and its constituent components against identified business and operational KPIs.
- Achieve effective telemetry including:
- AWS Infrastructure Control Plane (e.g., AWS CloudTrail API logs and AWS Health events and AWS Service Quotas).
- AWS Infrastructure Service level (AWS service metrics like CPU, Disk and Network usage in an EC2 instance).
- Application level (e.g. monitoring API call volume, logging HTTP status codes and errors).
Evidence Documentation
1. Methodology and Processes for Defining Monitoring and Observability Capabilities
KPI Definition and Service Level Establishment Process
Business Alignment Workshop
- Conduct stakeholder interviews to understand business objectives, critical user journeys, and operational requirements
- Map business outcomes to measurable technical indicators
- Establish service level objectives (SLOs) based on customer experience requirements
- Define error budgets and acceptable risk tolerances
Technical KPI Framework
- Business KPIs: Revenue impact metrics, user engagement, conversion rates
- Operational KPIs: Availability, latency, error rates, throughput
- Infrastructure KPIs: Resource utilization, cost efficiency, security posture
- Application KPIs: Feature adoption, performance metrics, user satisfaction
Service Level Management Process
- Discovery Phase: Assess current monitoring capabilities and identify gaps
- Definition Phase: Establish SLIs (Service Level Indicators) and SLOs based on business requirements
- Implementation Phase: Deploy monitoring infrastructure and configure alerting
- Optimization Phase: Continuously refine thresholds and improve signal quality
Three-Tier Telemetry Strategy
AWS Infrastructure Control Plane Monitoring
- AWS CloudTrail: API call logging, governance events, and compliance auditing
- AWS Health Events: Service health notifications and planned maintenance events
- AWS Service Quotas: Proactive quota monitoring and automated increase requests
- AWS Config: Configuration compliance and drift detection
AWS Infrastructure Service Level Monitoring
- Amazon CloudWatch: System metrics (CPU, memory, disk, network) for EC2, RDS, ELB
- VPC Flow Logs: Network traffic analysis and security monitoring
- AWS Systems Manager: Patch compliance and inventory management
- Container Insights: ECS/EKS cluster and task-level metrics
Application Level Monitoring
- AWS X-Ray: Distributed tracing and service dependency mapping
- Application Load Balancer: HTTP status codes, request latency, and target health
- Custom Business Metrics: API call volume, feature usage, and user interaction patterns
- Log Analytics: Error pattern detection and business event correlation
2. Reference Architecture for Monitoring and Observability
Architecture Overview
The monitoring and observability architecture consists of four distinct tiers that provide comprehensive visibility across the entire technology stack:
┌─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┐
│ Application Tier │
├─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┤
│ Web Apps │ APIs │ Microservices │ Batch Jobs │ Lambda Functions │
│ │ │ │ │ │ │
│ └───────────┼───────────┼──────────────┼───────────────┘ │
│ │ │ │ │
│ ┌────▼───────────▼──────────────▼─────────────────────────────────┐ │
│ │ X-Ray Tracing & Custom Metrics │ │
│ └────┬───────────┬──────────────┬─────────────────────────────────┘ │
└─────────────────┼───────────┼──────────────┼─────────────────────────────────────┘
│ │ │
┌─────────────────▼───────────▼──────────────▼─────────────────────────────────────┐
│ Infrastructure Tier │
├─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┤
│ EC2 │ RDS │ ELB │ VPC │ Lambda │ ECS/EKS │ S3 │ CloudFront │
│ │ │ │ │ │ │ │ │ │
│ └───────┼───────┼───────┼────────┼─────────┼──────────┼────────┘ │
│ │ │ │ │ │ │ │
│ ┌────▼───────▼───────▼────────▼─────────▼──────────▼─────────────────┐ │
│ │ CloudWatch Metrics │ │
│ └────┬───────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘ │
└───────────┼───────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘
│
┌───────────▼───────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┐
│ Control Plane Tier │
├───────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┤
│ CloudTrail │ Config │ Health │ Service Quotas │ Security Hub │
│ │ │ │ │ │ │
│ └───────────┼──────────┼─────────────┼────────────────────┘ │
│ │ │ │ │
│ ┌────▼──────────▼─────────────▼──────────────────────────────┐ │
│ │ Control Plane Audit & Compliance │ │
│ └────┬─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘ │
└──────────────────┼─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘
│
┌──────────────────▼─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┐
│ Observability & Analytics Platform │
├───────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┤
│ CloudWatch Logs │ OpenSearch │ Kinesis │ Athena │ QuickSight │
│ │ │ │ │ │ │
│ └───────────────┼────────────┼───────────┼────────────┘ │
│ │ │ │ │
│ ┌────▼────────────▼───────────▼──────────────────────────┐ │
│ │ Dashboards & Alerting │ │
│ └────┬─────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘ │
└────────────────────────┼─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘
│
┌────────────────────────▼─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┐
│ Incident Response & Automation │
├─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┤
│ SNS │ Lambda │ Systems Manager │ EventBridge │ ITSM Integration │
└─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘
Core Components and Services
| Telemetry Level | AWS Services | Purpose | Custom Services/Policies |
|---|---|---|---|
| Control Plane | CloudTrail, Config, Health, Service Quotas | Governance, compliance, and service health | Custom CloudTrail log analysis, automated quota management |
| Infrastructure | CloudWatch, VPC Flow Logs, Systems Manager | System performance and security monitoring | Custom metrics aggregation, automated remediation scripts |
| Application | X-Ray, ALB logs, Custom metrics | Application performance and business KPIs | Custom business metric collection, distributed tracing correlation |
| Storage & Analytics | CloudWatch Logs, OpenSearch, Kinesis, Athena | Log aggregation and analysis | Custom log parsing, correlation rules, alerting logic |
| Visualization | CloudWatch Dashboards, QuickSight | Real-time monitoring and reporting | Custom dashboard templates, executive reporting |
| Response | SNS, Lambda, EventBridge | Incident response and automation | Custom runbooks, automated remediation workflows |
Implementation Procedures and Runbooks
Standard Operating Procedures
- Detect and Auto-Remediate Incidents in Real-Time
- Security Observability
- Observability for Modern Applications
- Signal Analytics and Visualization
Custom Services and Policies
- Automated Alerting Framework: Custom Lambda functions for intelligent alert routing based on severity and business impact
- Compliance Monitoring: Automated Config rules for continuous compliance validation
- Cost Optimization: Custom metrics for cost-per-transaction and resource efficiency tracking
- Security Incident Response: Automated workflows for security event correlation and response
Training and Knowledge Transfer
- Monitoring best practices workshops
- Runbook development and maintenance procedures
- Alert fatigue reduction strategies
- Incident response playbooks
Typical AWS Services and Third-Party Products
AWS Native Services
- Core Monitoring: Amazon CloudWatch, AWS X-Ray, AWS CloudTrail
- Log Management: CloudWatch Logs, Amazon OpenSearch, AWS Kinesis Data Firehose
- Analytics: Amazon Athena, Amazon QuickSight, AWS Glue
- Automation: AWS Lambda, Amazon EventBridge, AWS Systems Manager
- Security: AWS Security Hub, Amazon GuardDuty, AWS Config
Third-Party Integration Options
- Unified Observability: Datadog, New Relic, Splunk
- Application Monitoring: AppDynamics, Dynatrace
- Log Analytics: Elastic Stack, Splunk Enterprise
- Incident Management: PagerDuty, Opsgenie, ServiceNow
Implementation Approach
Phase 1: Assessment and Planning (1-2 weeks)
- Current state monitoring assessment
- Business KPI definition workshops
- Gap analysis and requirements gathering
- Architecture design and tool selection
Phase 2: Infrastructure Setup (2-3 weeks)
- Control plane monitoring implementation
- Infrastructure service level monitoring deployment
- Application monitoring framework setup
- Dashboard and alerting configuration
Phase 3: Application Integration (2-4 weeks)
- Custom metrics implementation
- Distributed tracing deployment
- Business KPI tracking setup
- Log correlation and analysis
Phase 4: Optimization and Training (1-2 weeks)
- Alert tuning and false positive reduction
- Runbook development and testing
- Team training and knowledge transfer
- Documentation and handover
Success Metrics and Validation
- Mean Time to Detection (MTTD): < 5 minutes for critical issues
- Mean Time to Resolution (MTTR): < 30 minutes for P1 incidents
- Alert Accuracy: > 95% actionable alerts (reduced false positives)
- Coverage: 100% of critical business processes monitored
- Compliance: Automated compliance validation and reporting
This document provides evidence of our monitoring and observability baseline methodology and reference architecture in compliance with AWS Partner requirements.