Alibaba Cloud Certified Associate (ACA) Practice Test

CloudMonitor, a service provided by Alibaba Cloud, collects operating system level metrics through log agents. Log agents are lightweight programs installed on a user's servers that gather metrics, logs, and events directly from the operating system. They operate by monitoring various system characteristics, such as CPU usage, memory consumption, disk I/O, network traffic, and application performance. This data is then transmitted to CloudMonitor for centralized analysis and visualization. While APIs, third-party plugins, and all-in-one monitoring applications can play a role in overall monitoring strategies, they do not specifically address the collection of system-level metrics in the same direct manner as log agents. APIs enable interaction with services, but they are generally not used specifically for collecting raw OS-level data. Third-party plugins might integrate with other tools, yet they do not typically fulfill the primary function of gathering metrics from the operating system. All-in-one monitoring applications may offer comprehensive solutions but do not imply a direct method for operating system level monitoring akin to that provided by dedicated log agents. Thus, log agents are uniquely positioned to fulfill this specific need within the CloudMonitor framework.