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Welcome back! In this guide, we’ll explore four AWS CloudWatch Insights tools—Container Insights, Lambda Insights, Contributor Insights, and Application Insights—and show how they help you monitor, troubleshoot, and optimize your applications under any workload. Use case scenario: Imagine preparing an e-commerce platform for Black Friday traffic. You need real-time visibility across containers, serverless functions, and microservices to ensure uptime and performance. Let’s dive in.
Insight TypePrimary Use CaseKey Benefit
Container InsightsMonitoring containerized applications (EKS, ECS, Kubernetes)Unified metrics and logs for clusters
Lambda InsightsObservability for AWS Lambda functionsSpot function outliers and memory leaks
Contributor InsightsHigh-cardinality event analytics for microservicesPinpoint source of errors and slowdowns
Application InsightsEnd-to-end web application monitoringAuto-detect errors and performance issues

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Container Insights

When running microservices in containers, you need a holistic view of CPU, memory, network, and logs—all in one dashboard. Container Insights collects, aggregates, and visualizes these metrics so you can take action before small issues become outages.
The image illustrates a concept of "Container Insights" with icons representing containers, gears, and users, leading to a central insight symbol surrounded by settings icons.

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Key Features

FeatureDescription
Performance MonitoringTrack CPU, memory, disk I/O, and network throughput in real time.
Log Analytics & TroubleshootingSearch, filter, and correlate container logs across clusters.
Auto-Scaling IntegrationTrigger scaling policies based on custom metrics from your workloads.
Pay-As-You-Go PricingOnly pay for the metrics and logs you collect; no upfront costs.
You can enable Container Insights via the AWS Management Console, CLI, or CloudFormation in just a few clicks—no code changes required.
The image is a slide titled "Container Insights" with three sections: Performance Monitoring, Log Analytics and Troubleshooting, and Pricing, each with an icon and number.

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Lambda Insights

If your architecture relies on AWS Lambda for event-driven workloads (e.g., S3 triggers, EventBridge rules), Lambda Insights centralizes performance metrics and logs so you don’t have to investigate each function separately.
The image illustrates a process flow involving Lambda functions, tools, and users, leading to a central "Lambda Insight" component, surrounded by configuration icons.

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Key Features

  • Easy Setup: Enable instrumentation without modifying your existing code or deployment pipeline.
  • Real-Time Metrics: Monitor execution duration, memory usage, cold starts, and concurrency.
  • Bottleneck Detection: Quickly identify functions that exceed thresholds or show anomalous behavior.
  • Cost Allocation: Break down Lambda charges by function to optimize spend.
Lambda Insights incurs a small additional cost per metric and log, but gives you actionable data to reduce overall Lambda spend.
The image is a slide titled "Lambda Insights" with four sections: Easy Setup, Operational Visibility, Monitoring and Optimization, and Pricing, each represented by an icon and number.

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Contributor Insights

Contributor Insights provides real-time analytics on high-cardinality data (user IDs, API endpoints, order IDs) so you can pinpoint which component in your transaction pipeline is causing issues.
The image outlines three aspects of "Contributor Insights": High-Cardinality Data Analysis, Performance Impact Identification, and Data Aggregation and Discovery.

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Key Features

FeatureBenefit
High-Cardinality AnalysisDrill into unique keys (e.g., user ID, session ID) to spot hotspots.
Performance Impact IdentificationCorrelate slow API calls or retries with downstream resource errors.
Trend Aggregation & AlertsAggregate events over time, set thresholds, and receive alerts.
Contributor Insights shines as your microservice count grows. Use it proactively in production to detect anomalies early.

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Application Insights

For full-stack web applications—like a live video streaming site—Application Insights offers automatic error detection, performance tracing, and dependency mapping to keep end users happy.
The image shows a slide titled "Application Insights" with two sections: "Web Application Monitoring" and "Telemetry Data Utilization," each with an icon and number.

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Key Features

  • Web Application Monitoring: Auto-discover exceptions, HTTP 5XX errors, and latency spikes.
  • Dependency Mapping: Visualize calls to databases, caches, and external APIs.
  • Telemetry Dashboard: Combine user, performance, and operational data in one view.
Application Insights adds overhead—enable it for mission-critical applications where user experience metrics are essential.

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