Migrate from CloudWatch to OpenObserve

If you're using Amazon CloudWatch for AWS infrastructure metrics and dashboards and want to move to OpenObserve, this guide walks you through the migration. The OpenObserve Dashboard Migrator converts CloudWatch dashboards into OpenObserve dashboards automatically, and CloudWatch Metric Streams carry the underlying data across.

Migrating CloudWatch has two parts:

The data — stream CloudWatch metrics into OpenObserve using CloudWatch Metric Streams → Kinesis Firehose in OpenTelemetry format. The metrics land in a log stream with a fixed column shape (namespace, metric name, dimensions, sum/count/min/max).
The dashboards — convert your CloudWatch dashboards into OpenObserve dashboards with the Dashboard Migrator, which turns each metric widget into a SQL query over that stream.

Overview — why migrate and what changes
Migrating Dashboards — convert CloudWatch dashboards with the Dashboard Migrator

Why Migrate?

CloudWatch is convenient when you're already in AWS, but it bills per custom metric, per alarm, per dashboard, and per ingested log GB, and it keeps metrics for a limited retention window. As your footprint grows, the cost and the operational opacity both climb.

OpenObserve stores the same metrics as Apache Parquet on object storage (up to 140x more efficient), keeps data as long as you want, and lets you query metrics, logs, and traces in one place with SQL.

What OpenObserve Changes

	CloudWatch	OpenObserve
Pricing model	Per custom metric, alarm, dashboard, log GB	Storage + compute only
Storage backend	AWS-managed, fixed retention	Apache Parquet on S3 / GCS / Azure Blob / local disk
Query language	CloudWatch Metrics Insights / Logs Insights	SQL
Dashboards	CloudWatch dashboard JSON	OpenObserve dashboard builder
Cross-signal correlation	Separate consoles for metrics vs. logs	Unified logs, metrics, traces in one UI
Lock-in	AWS-specific formats	Open standards; data lives in your bucket

How CloudWatch metrics reach OpenObserve

CloudWatch metrics are ingested into OpenObserve as a logs stream via a CloudWatch Metric Stream:

CloudWatch → Kinesis Data Firehose (OpenTelemetry format) → OpenObserve

The metric stream flattens each metric into a row with these columns, which is what the dashboard migrator then queries:

Column	Meaning
`namespace`	The CloudWatch namespace (e.g., `AWS/EC2`)
`metric_name`	The metric name (e.g., `CPUUtilization`)
`dimensions_<name>`	One column per dimension, lowercased
`region`	The AWS region
`unit`	The metric unit
`value_sum`, `value_count`, `value_min`, `value_max`	Aggregated sample values over the period
`_timestamp`	The sample time

See the OpenObserve ingestion docs for the Firehose setup.

Before You Start

Export your dashboards: note which CloudWatch dashboards you actually use, and export them via the AWS API (get-dashboard) or the migrator's "browse from AWS" option.
Confirm the metric stream: make sure your CloudWatch Metric Stream → Firehose → OpenObserve pipeline is running before you migrate dashboards, so the queries have data to validate against.

Set Up OpenObserve

Before migrating, get OpenObserve running:

After logging in, navigate to Data Sources to find your ingestion credentials and endpoint URLs.

Download OpenObserve for your platform from the downloads page.

After installation, access the UI at http://localhost:5080 and navigate to Data Sources to find your ingestion credentials and ready-to-use configuration snippets.

Next Steps

Migrating Dashboards — convert CloudWatch dashboards with the Dashboard Migrator
OpenObserve Ingestion — stream CloudWatch metrics and other signals into OpenObserve

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