SpectrumApp.io — Real time monitoring built on AWS CloudWatch
Amazon Web Services (AWS), the cloud-based platform for business solutions has always been pushing the envelope in providing the state of the art technology to its customers. AWS can be termed as Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS), as it offers the hardware infrastructure that allows businesses to create their web applications on cloud, rather than in-house. AWS also provides a long list of pre-built integrated web based services that ventures can use as foundation blocks to build their own tailor-made cloud solutions.
One such service is Amazon CloudWatch, which is a monitoring service for all the other services that AWS provides. Amazon CloudWatch can be used to track metrics, monitor logs, set alarms, respond to alterations in the AWS resources and keep a log of such events. It gives you full system visibility into aspects such as application performance, operational health and resource utilisation. Users can set limits on specific parameters and AWS CloudWatch will set alarms as and when these parameters cross their limits. All these features can be used to create a fast response protocol and keep the system healthy with a smooth run.
Considering the fact that issues in AWS services can have severe consequences, it is imperative that one must be fully informed about them in real time. Although AWS CloudWatch does a good job monitoring AWS services but there’s a great scope of improvement when it comes to keeping the users informed about it. Here is where Spectrum comes into picture.
Spectrum
Spectrum is a tool created for the purpose of simplifying the process of keeping users informed when AWS CloudWatch raises an alarm. It can be used to monitor services like EC2. S3, Account Billing and every other service AWS CloudWatch supports.
Spectrum is a one stop solution for keeping a watch on AWS services as it fetches data directly from AWS CloudWatch, and displays in real time on its dashboard. Additionally, it keeps it all very simple by having data from multiple services on a single screen.
Although AWS CloudWatch notifies its users, whenever an alarm is raised, setting-up notifications on AWS is nothing less than a herculean task and even more so for a layman. This is where Spectrum is best at what it does. Spectrum provides ease of use. Be it someone from the tech department or the management, Spectrum helps everyone equally, with its easy to understand interface and real-time monitoring.
Easy to Set-up: Spectrum is an easy to understand, easy to set-up and easy to use, application for monitoring AWS ClouldWatch’s alarms. To set it up, the user just needs to create an IAM user with access to CloudWatch and add its user-credentials to Spectrum. Then paste the following URL, https://spectrumapp.io/monitor, to AWS SNS to complete the set-up process. The no-hassle set-up is one of the biggest perks of Spectrum.
Easy Integrations: Spectrum allows users to easily integrate their team members to monitor the same account, a feature which is non-existent in AWS CloudWatch. A user needs to provide the email of the individuals that are needed to be integrated into the team and Spectrum does the rest.
The members are sent a link which allows them to join the monitoring team. Spectrum also allows users to easily add multiple products to their Spectrum account, and monitor them on a single screen.
Innovative Dashboard: Monitoring AWS services encompasses a lot of parameters which fluctuate frequently. Spectrum displays them all on a single screen, on an easy-to-read dashboard, in real-time. Users can access the dashboard on the go as well, using the Spectrum mobile app. Spectrum follows a red-green colour coding technique to make the dashboard easily understandable. The dashboard shows green when everything is alright and it changes to red whenever there’s a problem.
Alarm System: While users do get alerts when there is a problem, it is cumbersome and hard to set-up multiple alerts for multiple parameters on AWS CloudWatch. Spectrum, on the other hand, brings multiple notifications to a single place — the Spectrum dashboard. One can get notified on both mobile and desktop. If there is a problem, there’s an option to receive SMSs (for India as of now) as well. Moreover, future possibilities include the option to integrate Spectrum with Trello and Slack to make it easy for professionals to register and solve problems while using the tools they are already using.
Endnote
Spectrum is the one-stop solution for web and mobile companies. It allows businesses to efficiently monitor all their AWS services on a single screen, which saves time and capital.
Spectrum is also essential for businesses that have to monitor their AWS services but are uninformed about the technical aspect of it. The ease of setting-up and using Spectrum makes it a great tool for these businesses. Also, when the tech team is remote and the management wishes to be informed whenever there is a problem in one or more of their AWS services, Spectrum is their best bet. The innovative colour-coding dashboard and the ability to inform the users through multiple avenues, is one of the many features Spectrum comes with. Combined with AWS CloudWatch it is a complete toolbox for server monitoring for businesses.
