Real time website monitoring with AWS Cloudwatch Synthetic Canaries : Ensuring uptime and performance.

What is AWS Cloudwatch synthetics?AWS synthetics is a tool powered by AWS Cloudwatch which allows you to create and manage canaries. It is a real time monitoring tool which helps you to detect problems by mimicking a real user behaviour.

What are canaries?

Canary in the context of AWS cloudwatch is a small script that runs at regular intervals and simulates real user interactions on your website, endpoints, API etc.

How do canaries work?

These scripts are written in Node.js language and run in a managed lambda environment.

Why is lambda required here?

1.It hosts canary code.
2.Run it on a regular interval.
3.Manage the runtime environment.
4.Capture the artifacts and send them to the cloudwatch.

Lets see the architecture of a website monitoring by cloudwatch synthetic canaries.

This proactive system ensures that the Admin is alerted about website issues even before end users notice, leading to faster response times and a more seamless experience for visitors.

Steps to create the Heartbeat monitoring for a Website.

1.Navigate to Aws cloudwatch service.

2.Navigate to the Application signals(APM) and look for the Synthetic Canaries.

Step 2

3.Click on Create canary.

Step 3

4.Choose use a Blueprint and heartbeat monitoring.

Step 4

5.Give your canary a custom name in lower case only and provide the URL that you want to monitor and tick the check box for taking snapshots.

Step 5

6.Choose your Node.js version and also you can see your website URL that you are going to monitor in the script under const urls.

Step 6

7.Now select the schedule that you want to run and timeout for the canary.

Step 7

8.Select the retention period of the canary data and select the S3 bucket in which you want data to be stored.

Step 8

9.Now create a new role for S3 and configure the AWS cloudwatch alarms and create a new SNS topic to trigger the notifications or you can use an existing one.

Step 9

10.Put the required tag to identify the resources after creating them and hit create canary.

Step 10

Now your canary is ready to monitor the desired URL, ADMIN will get notified whenever there is an error or anomaly detected.

In the dashboard you can look for the canary check status and success percentage of the URL.

Canary dashboard

Conclusion

In an era where user expectations are higher than ever, ensuring the availability and performance of your website is non-negotiable. AWS CloudWatch Synthetics offers a proactive and automated way to monitor your web applications using canary scripts. By simulating real user behavior and integrating with services like Lambda, S3, CloudWatch, and SNS, it enables early detection of issues—often before they impact actual users.

This not only empowers Admins to respond swiftly but also contributes to a seamless, reliable, and high-quality user experience. Whether you’re running a small website or a large-scale platform, AWS Synthetics is a powerful tool to keep your application healthy, responsive, and always one step ahead.