Amazon CloudWatch vs Stackify Retrace

• Managing log retention periods is very simple with CloudWatch, and can be configured on a per-group basis.
• Monitoring host performance is very easy when coupled with the CloudWatch Agent on an EC2 instance. A simple installation and configuration replaces an entire 3rd-party host monitoring stack.
• CloudWatch is flexible enough for not just host monitoring, but application monitoring as well. It's easy to pipe local logs up to CloudWatch and extract structured data in order to monitor and set alerts on custom app metrics.

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• APM Plus has a searchable archive that makes it easy to find a previously sent document.
• APM plus can automatically decide if the email address isn't present on a document, send it by fax. If no fax number exists the document is sent back to sender for evaluation.
• Sending to APM Plus is as simple as sending a document to a Printer! APM Plus does the rest!

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• Unfortunately, the CloudWatch dashboard does not provide the ability to create histograms of discrete counts. This makes it difficult to, for instance, use CloudWatch to quickly identify specific IP addresses that have a high request volume in a certain period.
• The UX for creating a custom metric from a CloudWatch log group is somewhat confusing. Every time I need to create a new metric I find myself fumbling around the interface for a few minutes while I try to remember how to do it.
• The alerting options for CloudWatch are not as extensive as are available with some 3rd-party services.

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• To set up the fields that APM Plus monitors, you need to map each field area on each document.
• APM Plus could use a way to link the documents back into the finance or business software so you can find the document under the PO, Sales Order, Invoice, etc.
• APM Plus setup is only for the professionals. There are many areas that need tweaking on setup, having a better default setup would lessen the learning curve to set it up for use.

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• It saves time pouring through log files, providing us non-engineers with a nice clean, intuitive interface
• It helps us maximize "up-time" by allowing us to stay ahead of third-party service downtime

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• APM Plus has freed up users from having to manually attach documents to each place they are sending it. APM Plus will do it automatically.
• APM Plus provides a searchable archive to re-visit sent documents with customers and vendors. Having to reprint a document you risk the potential that something has changed since it was last printed.
• APM Plus does need IT staff for adjustments and to review sending problems. Not for an average user.

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