8 documented AWS CloudWatch cost inefficiencies, each with how to detect it and how to fix it.
AWS CloudWatchCER-0233
VPC Flow Logs configured with the ALL filter and delivered to CloudWatch Logs often result in unnecessarily high log ingestion volumes - especially in high-traffic environments. This setup is rarely required for day-to-day monitoring or...
AWS CloudWatchCER-0224
By default, CloudWatch Log Groups use the Standard log class, which has a higher per-GB ingestion price. AWS also offers an Infrequent Access (IA) log class designed for logs that are rarely queried - such as audit trails, debugging...
AWS CloudWatchCER-0090
Engineers often enable verbose logging (e.g., debug or trace-level) during development or troubleshooting, then forget to disable it after deployment. This results in elevated log ingestion rates - and therefore costs - even when the...
AWS CloudWatchCER-0060
CloudWatch log groups often persist long after their usefulness has expired. In some cases, they are associated with applications or resources that are no longer active. In other cases, the systems may still be running, but the log data is...
AWS CloudWatchCER-0379
A classic CloudWatch metric is identified by its namespace, name and dimensions, and CloudWatch treats every unique combination of dimension values as a separate metric. Each of those is billed as a custom metric for every hour it receives...
AWS CloudWatchCER-0380
Third-party observability platforms, open source exporters and in-house scripts usually collect AWS metrics by calling the CloudWatch GetMetricData API on a schedule. GetMetricData is billed by the number of metrics requested and, unlike...
AWS CloudWatchCER-0381
CloudWatch alarms are not deleted when the resource they watch goes away. When an EC2 instance, Lambda function, load balancer, queue or database is removed, its alarms keep existing and typically move to the INSUFFICIENT_DATA state...
AWS CloudWatchCER-0382
EC2 basic monitoring publishes instance metrics to CloudWatch at 5-minute granularity at no charge. Detailed monitoring switches those metrics to 1-minute granularity, and each metric EC2 sends is then billed at the CloudWatch custom...
