{"id":3464,"date":"2022-01-13T12:00:27","date_gmt":"2022-01-13T12:00:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/uptime.com\/blog\/?p=3464"},"modified":"2025-01-08T15:14:16","modified_gmt":"2025-01-08T15:14:16","slug":"learning-from-the-aws-outage-internal-monitoring-alone-isnt-enough","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/uptime.com\/blog\/learning-from-the-aws-outage-internal-monitoring-alone-isnt-enough","title":{"rendered":"Learning from the AWS Outage: Internal Monitoring Alone Isn\u2019t Enough\u00a0"},"content":{"rendered":"

If you have set up your own monitoring services with Amazon CloudWatch, Azure Monitor or another internal tool, we suggest you consider looking beyond the horizon.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

These services often provide internal web monitoring only. Perhaps they validate HTTP availability from locations outside their networks, but HTTP checks won\u2019t give you a 360\u00ba view into the state of your services.<\/span><\/p>\n

Internal Web Monitoring: The Message of Dec. 7th 2021<\/span><\/h2>\n

The following is taken from AWS\u2019 own <\/span>Summary of the AWS Service Event in the Northern Virginia (US-EAST-1) Region<\/span><\/a>:<\/span><\/p>\n

To explain this event, we need to share a little about the internals of the AWS network. While the majority of AWS services and all customer applications run within the main AWS network, AWS makes use of an internal network to host foundational services including monitoring, internal DNS, authorization services, and parts of the EC2 control plane.<\/span><\/p>\n

We\u2019re not going to break apart the specifics of the December 7th AWS outage, but we will sum it up by saying that if you\u2019re hosting your own internal monitoring (as Amazon does on their own internal network), it could be an expensive lesson in \u201cputting all your eggs in one basket.\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

After all, what good is performance monitoring if your internal system (which houses your monitoring) fails and leaves you searching through logs line by line looking for the latencies in your own system?<\/span><\/p>\n

Internal Vs. External Monitoring<\/span><\/h2>\n

If you want to take a deep dive into the differences between internal and external monitoring – you can do that <\/span>here<\/span><\/a>.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

There are two parts to Internal monitoring. Internal website monitoring checks servers behind a load balancer or firewall. If you\u2019re using a web-based infrastructure like Amazon Web Services (AWS) or Microsoft Azure, the monitoring provided still may only be checking behind that cloud provider\u2019s firewall. While Internal web monitoring is critical – it shouldn\u2019t be your only coverage.<\/span><\/p>\n

Internal site monitoring is a powerful tool for gaining insights into performance and diagnostics, as well as for capacity planning and upgrading. This information, though useful, will not give you metrics on the end user\u2019s experience.<\/span><\/p>\n

The other aspect is internal<\/span> systems<\/b> monitoring which checks for:<\/span><\/p>\n