AWS CloudWatch Events provides a powerful way to respond to changes in your AWS environment or trigger actions based on time schedules. It enables real-time event-driven automation and orchestration within AWS services.

Key Features

• Event Source: Tracks system changes in AWS services or third-party integrations.
• Rules: Define how to respond to specific events or schedules.
• Targets: Specify actions to take when an event matches a rule (e.g., invoke a Lambda function, start an EC2 instance, or post to an SNS topic).
• Granularity: Offers near real-time event detection.
• Custom Events: You can emit your own application-specific events.

Components of CloudWatch Events

1. Event Source

• AWS Events: Automatically generated by AWS services, such as EC2 state changes, Auto Scaling actions, or S3 object changes.
• Custom Events: Emitted from your applications using the AWS SDK.
• Scheduled Events: Triggered on a regular schedule using cron or rate expressions.

2. Rules

• Match events from an event source.
• Can have multiple targets for a single rule.
• Support filtering based on event pattern.

3. Targets

• Define actions to take when a rule matches.