Powerful AWS CloudWatch Alternative

Get pre-configured metrics, thresholds and alerts for all your AWS cloud services with eG Enterprise. Simplify your on-prem, cloud, multi-cloud and hybrid cloud monitoring.

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What is CloudWatch for AWS?

Amazon CloudWatch is a monitoring service for Amazon Web Services cloud resources and the applications you run on Amazon Web Services. You can use the CloudWatch dashboard to track key metrics in real-time, and you can also create custom dashboards to display metrics about custom applications. Being the native tool for AWS, CloudWatch is easy to set up and use.

  • While the basic metrics provided by Amazon CloudWatch are straightforward to configure, the configuration of more advanced monitoring capabilities is challenging.
  • For additional insight into workloads, to track OS and application-specific metrics and logs, CloudWatch agents need to be deployed on EC2 instances.
  • CloudWatch does not have pre-built templates. While detailed monitoring of database servers is possible, configuring application-level monitoring is very involved and cumbersome.
  • Furthermore, Amazon CloudWatch is priced per metric. Advanced analytics through auto-baselining costs money. Hence, the cost of using Amazon CloudWatch is not predictable as well.

Typical Challenges with AWS CloudWatch

Configuration is time consuming
Costs per metric, per threshold
Many add-ons required to get complete monitoring
Very limited virtual desktop monitoring support
No on-prem application/infrastructure monitoring support
No multi-cloud support

Going beyond AWS CloudWatch, Providing
End-to-End Amazon AWS Monitoring

eG Enterprise is an enterprise-grade performance and availability monitoring platform for all your IT application and infrastructure including AWS services. Its universal monitoring technology monitors operating systems, databases, middleware, web servers, messaging, all key AWS services, Kubernetes and containers. It also has specialized monitoring support for AWS WorkSpaces and AppStream 2.0.

IT managers can also support Azure environments and on-premises applications and infrastructure from a central web console. Besides filling the observability gaps of native CloudWatch, eG Enterprise automates manual tasks and removes manual configuration and tooling / scripting with out-of-the-box alerting, dashboards and reporting.

Comparison of AWS CloudWatch and
eG Enterprise Monitoring Capabilities

AWS CloudWatch eG Enterprise Monitoring Solution
Monitoring of key AWS services Pick and choose what metrics to collect. Cost is based on API calls made. Integrates with AWS CloudWatch. Can control the frequency of polling to reduce cost of monitoring.
Synthetic monitoring of user experience Supported using AWS Synthetics. Supports synthetic monitoring for web applications, client server, thin client applications, etc.
Detailed insights into EC2 instances, databases, applications, etc. Possible but separate tools are needed for each. AWS X-ray is needed for application transaction tracing, AWS Service Lens is needed to integrate traces with logs and metrics. AWS CloudWatch only provides basic metrics for database monitoring. AWS Database Performance Insights is needed for in-depth monitoring. Converged application and infrastructure monitoring tools like eG Enterprise provide a single pane of glass to monitor user experience, trace transactions, deep dive into application components and using this detail, determine the root cause of performance issues. Additional add-on products are not required.
Monitoring of other cloud environments, on-premises environments Only supports AWS services. Separate monitoring needed for other cloud providers. Not straightforward to monitor. Supports monitoring of multiple cloud environments and hybrid cloud environments from a common console.
Monitoring of Amazon WorkSpaces and AppStream Minimal state information and usage metrics are available. Provides a complete end-to-end monitoring solution for Amazon WorkSpaces and AppStream. Monitor user experience with logon simulation, get detailed insights into virtual desktops and applications with light-weight agents inside the desktops, and get pre-canned reports for usage analytics, SLA analysis and performance optimization.
Customized dashboards and reports tailored for different stakeholders Have to spend time and effort creating dashboards and reports. Time consuming. Has extensive pre-defined and readymade, domain-specific dashboards and reports tailored for the different stakeholders.
Ease of deployment Basic metrics are easy to obtain. There is no template for advanced metrics. So, administrators have to spend time picking and choosing what they want to monitor. Auto-discovers what to monitor. Pre-defined templates specify what to monitor for each cloud service and application in the cloud. Very little manual/tedious work is required for deployment and configuration.
Cost of monitoring The overall cost of monitoring is difficult to predict. The cost varies based on metrics collected – the greater the number of metrics monitored, the greater the cost. Cost is also based on frequency of monitoring – the greater the frequency, the higher the cost. Type of baselining mechanism also changes the cost. Monitoring cost is straightforward to compute. Licensing is based on the number of target applications or Operating Systems to be monitored, and is not licensed by number of metrics collected, frequency of monitoring, etc.
Root cause diagnosis, anomaly detection and analytics Often left to other tools that take feeds from these tools., All-in-one solution includes AIOps and data analytics capabilities to pinpoint the root cause of problems. Supports trend analysis and forecasting of metrics.
Flexibility and access to whole-of-market cloud Cannot be used to monitor other vendors’ technologies, and on-premises infrastructure or alternative clouds. Investing in CloudWatch tooling and configuration can commit customers to long-term vendor lock in and be an obstacle to moving to cost-effective alternatives in the future. Provides consistent alerting, dashboards and reports across all popular digital workspace, on-premises infrastructure and cloud technologies including Citrix, VMware, Amazon AWS, Kubernetes and others. Licensing transferable between digital technologies.

Why Choose eG Enterprise to
Monitor your AWS Cloud Services?

eG Innovations is an Amazon technology partner which means the product has been reviewed and approved by AWS engineers. Here’s why IT teams choose to use eG Enterprise to monitor their AWS cloud services:

  • eG Enterprise is AWS well-architected and certified
  • Quick, lightweight SaaS deployment of eG Enterprise
  • Easy to install to help you get started in minutes
  • Simple to understand subscription pricing
  • Available to purchase directly from the AWS marketplace

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)
about AWS CloudWatch Alternatives

CloudWatch is the native tool built into AWS services. Hence, it is easiest monitoring to deploy and use. Support is from one vendor for your cloud services and monitoring – AWS. Yet another advantage is billing for CloudWatch is integrated into AWS’ overall billing.

You can get started with Amazon CloudWatch for free. Most AWS Services (EC2, S3, Kinesis, etc.) send metrics for free to CloudWatch. With the free tier, you can get basic monitoring metrics at 5 min frequency, 10 detailed metrics at 1 min frequency and 1 million API requests. Additional details are available here.

There is no up-front commitment or minimum fee. You simply pay for what you use and will be charged at the end of the month for your usage. There is a cost for each custom metric, for each dashboard you create, per alarm metric (cost is different for standard resolution metric, high resolution metric or composite metric), per GB of log data ingested, per synthetic canary run, per RUM event processed, etc. Overall, it is a challenge to estimate the total cost of AWS CloudWatch per month.

For many basic users of AWS services, CloudWatch is the most suitable tool as it allows you to monitor a small number of basic metrics for free. However, for more complex needs, you might outgrow CloudWatch and look for an alternative like eG Enterprise.

Yes, eG Enterprise is available in AWS marketplace. You can purchase the service and pay for it through AWS.

Yes, there are pre-defined dashboards and reports available in eG Enterprise for AWS cloud services.

To read more about the requirements for monitoring AWS services with full observability, see: AWS Monitoring: What, Why, and How | eG Innovations

To learn more about eG Enterprise for Amazon AWS, please see: AWS Monitoring Tool - Monitoring Amazon AWS, Applications, Instances | eG Innovations

For further information on eG Enterprise for Amazon WorkSpaces, please see: Amazon WorkSpaces Monitoring Tool – AWS WorkSpaces Monitoring (eginnovations.com)


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  • Works on cloud environments, hybrid cloud setups and on-premises deployments
  • Deploy eG Enterprise using our SaaS platform or on-premises
  • Suitable for monitoring cloud applications, digital workspaces and IT infrastructures
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