SNS vs. SES for Email Notification

[zzzz]

Can someone please provide further explanation of the answer to the question below? The provided explanation simply states that SNS should be used over SES when monitoring EC2 instances but doesn’t say why. The rest of the explanation consists of general descriptions of services copy-pasted from AWS documentation that do not address the question in detail. The graphic does not help either, as it only addresses the CloudWatch portion (which I understand).

The question:

16. Question

Category: CSAA – Design Resilient Architectures

A company has a top priority requirement to monitor a few database metrics and then afterward, send email notifications to the Operations team in case there is an issue. Which AWS services can accomplish this requirement? (Select TWO.)

And answer explanation

Amazon CloudWatch and Amazon Simple Notification Service (SNS)
are correct. In this requirement, you can use Amazon CloudWatch to
monitor the database and then Amazon SNS to send the emails to the
Operations team. Take note that you should use SNS instead of SES
(Simple Email Service) when you want to monitor your EC2 instances.

CloudWatch collects monitoring and operational data in the form of logs, metrics, and events, providing you with a unified view of AWS resources, applications, and services that run on AWS, and on-premises servers.

SNS is a highly available, durable, secure, fully managed pub/sub messaging service that enables you to decouple microservices, distributed systems, and serverless applications.

Amazon Simple Email Service is incorrect. SES is a cloud-based email sending service designed to send notifications and transactional emails.

This is especially confusing because some resources, such as this AWS community blog, seem to contradict the provided explanation.

SES Use Cases:

Automated Notifications and Alerts: SES can deliver automated notifications and alerts to users or administrators based on specific events or conditions within an application or system, such as system monitoring alerts or important reminders.

System Monitoring and Incident Reporting: SES can be integrated with monitoring and logging systems to receive email notifications about application health, performance issues, or security incidents, enabling prompt detection and resolution of issues.

[Neil-TutorialsDojo]

Hello zzzz,

Good day!

Thank you for posting here. Regarding your concern, SNS is typically preferred over SES in this type of monitoring scenario because of its integration with other AWS services, particularly CloudWatch. CloudWatch can directly trigger SNS topics when alarms are raised, making setting up and managing the notification process easier.

SNS offers more flexibility in terms of notification types. While the question specifically asks about email notifications, SNS can easily be extended to send notifications via SMS, mobile push notifications, or even trigger Lambda functions if needed in the future.

SES is primarily designed as an email sending service, while SNS is a more general-purpose notification service. For a monitoring and alerting use case, SNS is usually more appropriate.

The AWS community blog you mentioned is correct in stating that SES can be used for system monitoring and incident reporting. However, in the context of AWS services and best practices, SNS is more commonly used for this purpose due to its tighter integration with CloudWatch and other AWS services.

We have already updated this item, which will be reflected in the portal once our admin approves the changes. I hope my explanation helps. Thank you.

Regards,

Neil @ Tutorials Dojo