CloudWatch vs. Stackdriver: Which one should you choose?
Choosing the right cloud API can be a daunting task, especially if you are not familiar with the available services. Two of the most popular cloud APIs are CloudWatch by Amazon and Stackdriver by Google. In this post, we will be comparing CloudWatch vs. Stackdriver to help you make an informed decision about which one to use.
What are CloudWatch and Stackdriver?
CloudWatch is a monitoring and observability service by Amazon Web Services (AWS). It provides developers with a unified view of their applications, infrastructure, and services running on AWS. CloudWatch collects, monitors, and analyzes data from resources such as EC2 instances, AWS Lambda functions, and RDS databases.
Stackdriver, on the other hand, is a monitoring, logging, and diagnostics service by Google Cloud Platform (GCP). It enables developers to get insights into their applications, system, and infrastructure at scale. Stackdriver collects logs, metrics, and traces from GCP resources, including virtual machines, Kubernetes, and Google Cloud Storage.
Features Comparison
Monitoring
Both CloudWatch and Stackdriver provide comprehensive monitoring capabilities. They offer metrics collection, dashboards, and alerting features.
CloudWatch offers a wide range of metrics, including EC2 instances, RDS, ElastiCache, and more. It also provides customizable dashboards and alarms to help identify and troubleshoot issues quickly. CloudWatch has a default resolution of one minute, but you can increase that to one second if the cost is not a concern.
Stackdriver, on the other hand, boasts a high-resolution metric collection, with a default resolution of one minute and the option to go as low as one second. It also offers a wide range of metrics for GCP services, including Compute Engine, Cloud Storage, and Cloud SQL. Stackdriver also comes with pre-built dashboards for common use cases and an alerting feature that supports multi-condition thresholds and anomaly detection.
Logging
Both CloudWatch and Stackdriver support centralized logging, but their approaches differ.
CloudWatch collects logs from EC2 instances, Lambda functions, and other AWS resources, consolidates them in a single location, and provides real-time monitoring and analysis. Though it now supports custom logs from other sources, it requires additional configuration.
On the other hand, Stackdriver supports centralized logging for both GCP and non-GCP services, including Amazon Web Services. It also has a powerful logging API that enables developers to upload custom logs from different sources. However, it can be difficult to set up and configure correctly.
Tracing and Diagnostics
Stackdriver offers richer diagnostic capabilities, including tracing and debugging tools, than CloudWatch.
It provides a distributed tracing feature that allows developers to visualize the path of requests across multiple services and identify performance bottlenecks. Stackdriver trace also integrates with other monitoring features such as logging and metrics to provide deeper insight into the system.
CloudWatch, on the other hand, does not have a tracing feature, but it offers detailed diagnostic information for AWS services. Its features include anomaly detection, performance analysis, and distributed tracing for AWS Lambda.
Pricing
CloudWatch and Stackdriver pricing structures are similar. Both cloud APIs offer a free tier with limited features and higher pricing for additional usage.
For CloudWatch, the first 10 custom metrics per month are free, and additional metrics cost $0.30 per metric per month. For logs, CloudWatch is billed based on the number of bytes ingested and the number of stored logs. The first 5 GB of logs ingestion and 5 GB of archived logs are free, and additional usage is billed based on the pricing tier.
Stackdriver, on the other hand, offers the first 50 GB of logs storage, up to 1,000 series-based custom metrics, and one free uptime check per month. After that, billing is based on the usage of metrics, logs, and uptime checks.
Conclusion
Both CloudWatch and Stackdriver are terrific cloud APIs that provide essential monitoring and observability capabilities for developers running their applications and services on AWS and GCP. Choosing between them comes down to what services and resources you use and how extensively you'll use them.
If you use AWS services extensively, CloudWatch is the best option for you. It offers unrivaled monitoring and diagnostics services for AWS resources. However, if your infrastructure is mostly on GCP, then Stackdriver is your go-to service. It offers in-depth monitoring and logging capabilities covering both Google Cloud Platform and non-GCP resources.
Happy monitoring!