Start infrastructure monitoring by choosing the systems and services whose health matters, collecting their basic metrics and relevant logs, then putting the few signals that need attention on a dashboard with actionable alerts. Add traces when you need to follow requests across services, and profiling when you need to identify code-level resource use. The right first setup depends on what you run and what your team can operate—not on a universal vendor ranking.
What infrastructure monitoring should answer
Monitoring is useful when it helps an operator answer practical questions: Is a service or resource healthy? What changed? Does someone need to respond? Begin with the hosts, cloud resources, clusters, and networked services that support the outcomes your team cares about. For each, identify an owner and the conditions that would warrant investigation or action.
Start with metrics and logs. Metrics are numerical measurements over time, useful for spotting trends and alerting. Logs are event records that add context to a change or failure. Traces follow a request through services and show where time is spent along that path. Profiles can help locate code-level resource consumption. These signals answer different questions; collecting all of them everywhere on day one is not necessary. Grafana Labs’ overview of telemetry signals describes these roles and how they complement each other: Quick start for telemetry signals.
How do I monitor my servers and cloud infrastructure?
- Set scope and ownership. List the services and infrastructure components that matter, who responds when they have problems, and what conditions should prompt a human response. Keep the initial coverage focused on those priorities.
- Collect a baseline. Gather host or cloud-resource metrics and relevant system or application logs. In an AWS-centered environment, Amazon CloudWatch’s getting-started material covers monitoring EC2 instances and on-premises servers: Getting Started with Amazon CloudWatch.
- Choose where telemetry goes. A cloud-native destination can simplify a first setup when most of your estate is on that cloud. For several services, Kubernetes, or a need to keep collection separate from the backend, evaluate a collector-based OpenTelemetry path.
- Build a small dashboard. Put the signals an operator needs to see together, so an alert or investigation has useful context. CloudWatch documents dashboards that combine visualizations of metrics and logs; Grafana documents dashboards for OpenTelemetry data.
- Add a small set of actionable alerts. Alert only on conditions that should lead to investigation or response. Tie alerts to a service or resource outcome and assign an owner. There is no universal threshold that fits every workload; establish thresholds from your own service behavior and operating requirements.
- Expand based on real investigations. Use metrics to identify when something changed, logs to inspect related events, and traces when the path through multiple services is the question. Add profiling when you need to understand code-level resource use.
- Review coverage and operating costs. Check whether the setup covers the actual environment, whether your team can run it, and what ingestion, retention, and query costs will be at your expected volume. Check current vendor pricing for your configuration before committing; prices are not directly comparable without matching those assumptions.
Choose a collection and monitoring approach
AWS-centered: evaluate CloudWatch first
CloudWatch is a natural first evaluation when AWS is the main environment. AWS documents metrics, logs, alarms, dashboards, custom metrics, infrastructure collection guidance, and OpenTelemetry support. Its AWS-native scope can reduce the number of moving parts for an AWS-heavy team, though you should still confirm coverage for on-premises systems and any non-AWS services you need to monitor. See What is Amazon CloudWatch? and AWS’s Metrics in Amazon CloudWatch.
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AWS’s decision guide describes CloudWatch, X-Ray, and AWS Distro for OpenTelemetry within its monitoring and observability landscape. Use it to understand the AWS options rather than assuming a single service covers every collection and troubleshooting need: Choosing an AWS monitoring and observability service.
Several services or Kubernetes: consider OpenTelemetry collection
OpenTelemetry provides a collector-oriented route for gathering and forwarding telemetry to an observability backend. Its operations guide is aimed at production operators collecting telemetry from several services without changing application code, and includes a collector setup and Kubernetes automation in its learning path: Getting started for Ops. A collector does not by itself settle where data is stored or how dashboards and alerts are operated; select a backend that fits your team’s workflow.
Managed backend: evaluate Grafana Cloud where it fits
Grafana Labs documents infrastructure integrations and a managed observability platform. Grafana Cloud is one option for teams that want a managed destination for telemetry and dashboards rather than assembling and operating every component themselves. Its infrastructure guidance covers monitoring infrastructure targets, while its OpenTelemetry material covers gaining application insights from telemetry data: Monitor your infrastructure and Gain application insights from telemetry data.
Rank #2
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Compare the work, not just the feature list
- Environment coverage: Can it collect from your cloud, hosts, Kubernetes clusters, and other services?
- Collection effort: What agents, collectors, or application instrumentation are required?
- Investigation workflow: Can operators move between relevant metrics, logs, and traces?
- Alerting and ownership: Can the team route and act on alerts in a way it can sustain?
- Data handling: Do retention, access controls, and deployment choices fit your requirements?
- Operating burden and total cost: What will collection, storage, retention, queries, and maintenance require at expected volume?
The available product documentation does not establish a neutral cross-vendor benchmark or current comparable prices, nor does it support one recommendation for every geography, deployment size, or workload. Compare a small representative setup against your own requirements and check vendors’ current terms.
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Keep the first dashboard and alerts useful
A dashboard should help the person responding see the state of the service or resources in scope, not become a wall of unrelated charts. Start with the metrics and logs that let an operator assess the condition that matters and investigate a change. CloudWatch documents dashboards that visualize metrics and logs together, and Grafana documents dashboards for OpenTelemetry data; see the linked product guidance above for their respective approaches.
For each alert, write down what the condition means, who owns it, and what response is expected. Avoid alerting on every fluctuation. If an alert would not lead to a human action, decide whether it belongs on an operational dashboard instead. Revisit thresholds after you observe real workload behavior; do not copy a universal number without evidence that it applies to your service.
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When to add traces or profiling
If a service has several components, a metric may show that latency or errors changed without showing where the request spent time. Traces can expose a distributed request’s path and timing, helping narrow the investigation to a service boundary or operation. If the question is instead why a particular process or function consumes CPU or memory, profiling can provide code-level resource detail. Add these signals where the architecture and unresolved investigations justify their collection and operating cost.
Or skip the browser setup: capture a monitoring page when you need a snapshot
Infrastructure monitoring itself needs telemetry, dashboards, and alerts; a screenshot is not a replacement for any of those. If a separate workflow needs a saved image or PDF of a monitoring page, ScreenshotNeo is a screenshot API and MCP server for developers. One GET request can return a PNG, JPEG, WebP, or PDF. Example cURL request:
curl -G "https://api.screenshotneo.com/v1/shot" -d access_key=YOUR_API_KEY --data-urlencode url=https://stripe.com -o shot.webpSee the ScreenshotNeo documentation for API parameters and response details. Cookie banners are accepted and removed before capture, along with 60+ known consent platforms, newsletter popups, and chat widgets; each step can be turned off. Bot checks or CAPTCHAs, blank pages, timeouts, failed loads, and cache hits are not billed, and the response reports the page verdict and billing status in headers. An MCP server offers take_screenshot, get_page_info, and capture_pdf tools for AI agents and MCP clients. The free plan includes 1,000 screenshots per month with no card; paid plans start at $5 for 3,000 shots. Sign up for 1,000 free screenshots a month, with no card required.
Troubleshoot the first setup
A host or resource is missing
Check that the selected collection path covers that environment and that its required agent or collector is configured for the target. For AWS, start with the CloudWatch guidance for the EC2 or on-premises systems in scope; for multi-service or Kubernetes collection, follow the OpenTelemetry operations setup path. Verify the component appears in the destination before relying on an alert for it.
Rank #4
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You have data but no useful dashboard
Reduce the view to the service or resources under one owner’s responsibility. Include signals that help assess the condition and investigate it; add logs or traces when they answer a question the existing metrics cannot.
An alert fires but no one knows what to do
Clarify the outcome the alert represents, assign an owner, and document the expected response. Adjust its condition using observed workload behavior rather than borrowing a threshold that may not apply.
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Estimate the expected telemetry volume and retention before broadening collection. Check current pricing for the actual services and configuration, including ingestion, retention, and query dimensions that apply; vendor prices and terms can change.
Quick Recap
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