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Amazon CloudWatch vs Sentry: What are the differences?
Amazon CloudWatch and Sentry are both powerful tools used in monitoring and error tracking for software applications. Let's explore the key differences between them.
Data Collection and Monitoring: Amazon CloudWatch primarily focuses on collecting and monitoring data from various AWS resources and services. It provides detailed insights into AWS infrastructure, including EC2 instances, RDS databases, and S3 buckets. On the other hand, Sentry specializes in application monitoring and error tracking. It captures and analyzes application-level events and errors, enabling developers to identify and resolve issues in real-time.
Monitoring Capabilities: While both tools offer monitoring capabilities, their scope differs. Amazon CloudWatch provides granular monitoring of AWS resources, allowing users to track metrics, visualize logs, and set up alarms for specific events or thresholds. On the other hand, Sentry focuses on application-level monitoring, providing a comprehensive view of errors, performance issues, and user feedback. It offers features like error aggregation, release monitoring, and transaction tracing.
Integration and Compatibility: Amazon CloudWatch is tightly integrated with AWS services and resources, offering native support for monitoring various metrics and generating alerts. It seamlessly integrates with other AWS services, making it an ideal choice for organizations heavily reliant on AWS infrastructure. On the contrary, Sentry supports a wide range of programming languages and frameworks, making it compatible with different application stacks. It provides SDKs and plugins for popular languages like Python, JavaScript, and Java.
Alerting and Notification: Both Amazon CloudWatch and Sentry support alerting and notification mechanisms, but their focus and flexibility differ. Amazon CloudWatch allows users to define alarms based on customizable metrics, enabling proactive notifications for specific events or threshold breaches. It can notify users through various channels like email, SMS, or SNS topics. Sentry, on the other hand, provides fine-grained control over alerting, allowing users to set up rules based on error severity, frequency, or specific criteria. It offers integrations with popular messaging and collaboration tools like Slack, making it easier to streamline incident response.
Log Management and Analysis: One key difference between Amazon CloudWatch and Sentry lies in their log management and analysis capabilities. Amazon CloudWatch is designed to collect and analyze logs generated by AWS resources, providing valuable insights into resource utilization, application health, and system-level events. On the other hand, Sentry focuses on application-specific logs and error traces. It aggregates, filters, and indexes application logs, enabling developers to diagnose and troubleshoot errors efficiently.
Scalability and Performance: Amazon CloudWatch is a fully managed service with built-in scalability, capable of handling large-scale infrastructure monitoring and data collection. It seamlessly scales based on the volume of metrics, logs, and events generated by AWS resources. In contrast, Sentry is designed to handle high-throughput application logs and error events, providing reliable performance and scalability for application-level monitoring. It offers features like rate limiting and event buffering to handle peak loads efficiently.
In summary, Amazon CloudWatch is an AWS-native service that specializes in monitoring and collecting data from AWS resources and services. It excels in infrastructure-level monitoring, while Sentry focuses on application-level monitoring, error tracking, and log analysis.
I essentially inherited a Shopify theme that was originally created by an agency. After discovering a number of errors being thrown in the Dev Console just by scrolling through the website, I needed more visibility over any errors happening in the field. Having used both Sentry and TrackJS, I always got lost in the TrackJS interface, so I felt more comfortable introducing Sentry. The Sentry free tier is also very generous, although it turns out the theme threw over 15k errors in less than a week.
I highly recommend setting up error tracking from day one. Theoretically, you should never need to upgrade from the free tier if you're keeping on top of the errors...
Pros of Amazon CloudWatch
- Monitor aws resources76
- Zero setup46
- Detailed Monitoring30
- Backed by Amazon23
- Auto Scaling groups19
- SNS and autoscaling integrations11
- Burstable instances metrics (t2 cpu credit balance)5
- HIPAA/PCI/SOC Compliance-friendly3
- Native tool for AWS so understand AWS out of the box1
Pros of Sentry
- Consolidates similar errors and makes resolution easy238
- Email Notifications121
- Open source108
- Slack integration84
- Github integration71
- Easy49
- User-friendly interface44
- The most important tool we use in production28
- Hipchat integration18
- Heroku Integration17
- Good documentation15
- Free tier14
- Self-hosted11
- Easy setup9
- Realiable7
- Provides context, and great stack trace6
- Feedback form on error pages4
- Love it baby4
- Gitlab integration3
- Filter by custom tags3
- Super user friendly3
- Captures local variables at each frame in backtraces3
- Easy Integration3
- Performance measurements1
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Cons of Amazon CloudWatch
- Poor Search Capabilities2
Cons of Sentry
- Confusing UI12
- Bundle size4