Week 6 Worklog

Objectives of Week 6

  • Set up system monitoring for the entire application.
  • Perform performance and stability testing.
  • Start controlling operational costs on AWS.

Tasks Completed During the Week

DayTaskStart DateEnd DateReferences
1- Perform stress testing
  + Test ALB and ECS under high load
  + Record performance metrics		13/04/202613/04/2026AWS Load Testing Solution, Locust on AWS
2- Set up Amazon CloudWatch
  + Collect logs and metrics
  + Monitor CPU, memory, and requests		14/04/202614/04/2026CloudWatch Metrics Guide, ECS CloudWatch Metrics
3- Build monitoring dashboard
  + Aggregate key metrics
  + Visualize system performance		15/04/202615/04/2026CloudWatch Dashboards, Sample Monitoring Dashboards
4- Configure cost alerts
  + Set up budget alarms
  + Receive notifications when exceeding thresholds		16/04/202616/04/2026AWS Budgets Guide, Cost Explorer Alarms
5- Optimize logging
  + Adjust log retention policy
  + Reduce CloudWatch Logs costs		17/04/202617/04/2026CloudWatch Logs Retention, Logging Cost Optimization
6- Create operational runbook
  + Document incident handling procedures
  + Define service restart workflows		18/04/202618/04/2026AWS Well-Architected Operations, Systems Manager Runbooks
7- System validation
  + Evaluate performance after optimizations
  + Prepare for security hardening phase		19/04/202619/04/2026-

Weekly Achievements

  • A complete monitoring system is established for real-time observability.
  • Baseline performance metrics have been defined.
  • Cost monitoring is enabled with automated alerts.

Challenges & Lessons Learned

  • Challenge: CloudWatch Logs costs increased quickly due to default retention settings.
  • Solution: Adjust log retention policies and optimize logging configuration.
  • Lesson Learned: Monitoring is not only for detecting issues but also for controlling operational costs.

Plan for Next Week

  • Strengthen system security using AWS WAF.
  • Set up a Bastion Host for secure access.
  • Automate backend workflows.