Introduction:

In today’s world,companies like Zomato, Uber, and Swiggy works heavily on real-time notifications, monitoring, and security tracking to ensure smooth operations.Amazon Web Services (AWS) provides three powerful services to achieve this: Amazon SNS (Simple Notification Service), Amazon CloudWatch, and AWS CloudTrail.

In this blog, We explore these services with real-world examples and see how they fit into everyday cloud scenarios.

Amazon SNS – Simple Notification Service

SNS is a fully managed messaging service that allows applications, services, or users to communicate instantly.

How it works:

• Create a Topic (channel of communication).
• Add Subscribers (email, SMS, Lambda, SQS, etc.).
• Publish a Message (from applications or AWS services).

Real-world examples:

• Zomato/Uber notifications:

When our food is out for delivery, SNS publishes a message → you receive an SMS/email instantly.

• Cloud billing alerts:

If our AWS usage bill crosses a set threshold, SNS triggers an email alert to prevent unexpected costs.

Amazon CloudWatch – Monitoring and Observability

• CloudWatch is AWS’s monitoring service for applications, infrastructure, and services.

Features:

• Metrics Monitoring: CPU, memory, storage, network.
• Dashboards: Visualize performance in real time.
• Alarms: Trigger actions (like auto-scaling or notifications).
• Logs: Application logs, server logs, error logs.
• CloudWatch Agent: Install on EC2/on-premises servers to push custom metrics.

Real-world examples:

• Uber ride-tracking servers: CloudWatch monitors EC2 instances handling GPS data; if CPU usage spikes, auto-scaling is triggered.

AWS CloudTrail – Auditing and Governance

• CloudTrail is AWS’s auditing service that records all API calls and user actions across your AWS account.

why it's using:

• Tracks who did what and when.
• Helps in security analysis and compliance.
• Provides audit logs for governance.

Real-world examples:

• IAM activity monitoring: Detects if someone tried to create a new admin user without approval.

Conclusion

• Amazon SNS: Notifies users instantly.
• Amazon CloudWatch: Monitors and visualizes metrics/logs.
• AWS CloudTrail: Tracks all AWS activity for security and compliance.

✨ Stay tuned for more learnings as I continue my AWS journey!