Which AWS service helps you monitor your applications and resources?

AWS CloudWatch is the service designed for monitoring applications and resources within the AWS ecosystem. It provides you with a comprehensive view of your resource utilization, application performance, and operational health.

CloudWatch collects metrics from various AWS services and allows you to set alarms, create dashboards, and gain insights from logs. This capability is crucial for maintaining the performance of applications and resources, as it enables proactive management by facilitating the identification of issues before they affect end users.

Additionally, CloudWatch integrates with other AWS services, allowing for automation of actions based on monitoring data. For instance, if certain thresholds are breached, CloudWatch can trigger alerts or even invoke AWS Lambda functions to handle specific operational tasks.

In contrast, while AWS CloudTrail is focused on logging and monitoring account activity within the AWS environment (such as API calls), it does not provide real-time insights into resource performance. AWS Lambda is a compute service that runs code in response to events, and AWS S3 is a storage service, neither of which provide monitoring capabilities.