3.2.1. Collecting & Managing Logs and Metrics

Effective observability starts with data collection — like a hospital's vital signs monitors, your log and metric pipelines are the sensors that detect problems before they become emergencies. Without structured, secure, and well-managed collection pipelines, your monitoring dashboards display noise instead of signal. Worse, if logs aren't encrypted or access-controlled, sensitive data leaks through your observability stack.

This section covers the foundational layer: how to gather, secure, transform, and manage operational data across your AWS environment. How do you ensure the right data reaches the right destination in real-time without creating security gaps?