CloudWatch, CloudTrail, CloudFormation

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CloudWatch

• What it is: The Monitoring service. It tracks performance. It tells you "CPU usage is at 90%" or "The Lambda function failed." You use it to set alarms and view logs.

• Data Engineer Note: If your pipeline crashes, you go here to read the error logs.

• Equivalents:

  • GCP: Cloud Monitoring (formerly Stackdriver)

  • Azure: Azure Monitor

CloudTrail

• What it is: The Auditing service. It tracks activity. It tells you "User Alice deleted the database at 2:00 PM." It records every single API call made in your account.

• Data Engineer Note: If data mysteriously disappears, you check CloudTrail to see who did it.

• Equivalents:

  • GCP: Cloud Audit Logs

  • Azure: Azure Monitor Activity Log

CloudFormation

• What it is: Infrastructure as Code (IaC). Instead of clicking buttons in the console to create servers, you write a YAML or JSON file describing the infrastructure, and AWS builds it for you.

• Data Engineer Note: While CloudFormation is the native AWS tool, most Data Engineers today prefer using Terraform because it works across AWS, GCP, and Azure.

• Equivalents:

  • GCP: Cloud Deployment Manager (but Terraform is preferred)

  • Azure: ARM Templates / Bicep

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