Amazon CloudWatch Detailed Monitoring Granularity
Short answer
B Enabling detailed monitoring on all EC2 instances provides metrics at a 1-minute granularity, satisfying the requirement.
Question
Key Takeaways
The exam tests knowledge of CloudWatch metric frequency, with the common trap being confusion between standard (5-minute) and detailed (1-minute) monitoring intervals.
This question tests the specific monitoring granularity provided by Amazon EC2 detailed monitoring. It establishes that enabling detailed monitoring is the correct configuration to achieve 1-minute metric data points.
Common mistake: Candidates often select options involving Redshift or QuickSight, assuming complex analytics are needed for performance analysis, rather than recognizing that basic metric collection suffices for the stated granularity requirement.
Expert Analysis
Why the Answer Is Correct
Correct answer: B — Enabling detailed monitoring on all EC2 instances provides metrics at a 1-minute granularity, which satisfies the requirement for no more than 2 minutes. Standard monitoring only provides 5-minute granularity, which would fail this specific constraint.
Why the Other Options Are Wrong
Options A, C, and D involve sending logs to external services like Redshift, S3, or using Lambda. These are log-based solutions, not metric-based performance monitoring. While they can analyze performance, they do not provide the real-time, structured metric data required for immediate performance analysis at the specified granularity. Additionally, these options add unnecessary complexity and cost for a simple monitoring requirement.
Community Comment Notes
The community consensus strongly supports option B, with users noting that detailed monitoring provides 1-minute granularity. One user specifically cited AWS documentation confirming that "Enabling detailed monitoring on EC2 instances provides metrics at a 1-minute granularity." Another user simply confirmed the answer as B, highlighting the straightforward nature of this concept. The high vote count indicates strong agreement that this is a fundamental knowledge check.
Official Reference
https://docs.aws.amazon.com/AWSEC2/latest/UserGuide/using-cloudwatch-new.html
This link opens the official vendor documentation in a new tab.
Exam Strategy
When asked about monitoring granularity, always distinguish between standard (5-minute) and detailed (1-minute) monitoring in CloudWatch. If the requirement is less than 5 minutes, detailed monitoring is typically the answer for EC2 metrics.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is the difference between standard and detailed monitoring?
Can I use CloudWatch Logs for performance analysis?
Community Votes
100% of anonymous learners picked answer B. Votes are pick records left by other test-takers — they are not the verified answer.
Discussion 4 contributions
Compiled from public community threads and reader submissions, lightly edited for clarity. Handles and vote tallies are shown as recorded, and comments reflect the views of individual contributors.
From public community threads 4
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officedepotadmin 👍 2 Answered BEnabling detailed monitoring on EC2 instances provides metrics at a 1-minute granularity, which is well within the required 2-minute granularity for performance analysis.
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[Removed] 👍 2 Answered BB. Enable detailed monitoring on all EC2 instances. Use Amazon CloudWatch metrics to perform further analysis.
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muhammadahmer36 👍 2 Answered Bhttps://docs.aws.amazon.com/AWSEC2/latest/UserGuide/using-cloudwatch-new.html
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komorebi 👍 2 Answered BAnswer is B
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