Answer: Amazon CloudWatch

Amazon CloudWatch is the AWS service designed for monitoring operational metrics and collecting performance data. It provides metrics for various AWS resources including EC2 instances (CPU utilization, disk I/O), RDS databases, and other services. CloudWatch enables users to collect and track metrics, collect and monitor log files, set alarms, and automatically react to changes in AWS resources. **Key features of Amazon CloudWatch:** - **Metrics Collection**: Collects operational metrics from AWS services - **Monitoring**: Monitors CPU utilization, network traffic, disk I/O, and other performance indicators - **Alarms**: Allows setting alarms to notify when metrics breach thresholds - **Dashboards**: Provides customizable dashboards for visualizing metrics **Comparison with other options:** - **AWS CloudTrail**: Records API calls and user activity for auditing and compliance - **AWS Config**: Tracks resource configurations and changes over time - **AWS Trusted Advisor**: Provides recommendations for cost optimization, security, and performance improvements Therefore, Amazon CloudWatch is the correct answer for monitoring operational metrics like CPU utilization, latency, and disk I/O.

Author: Jin H