What it does
Cloud Monitor 2.0 is Alibaba Cloud's unified observability platform. It brings together Cloud Monitor, Simple Log Service, and Application Real-Time Monitoring Service to display infrastructure and application metrics, logs, traces, and events in a shared model. Teams can connect sources through Integration Center, explore related entities, define alert rules, and route incidents to contacts, chatbots, webhooks, or action integrations. The service is aimed at organizations already operating Alibaba Cloud or connected hybrid environments.
Connect a workspace before tuning alerts
Cloud Monitor 2.0 organizes its sources and observability apps in regional workspaces. A documented starting point is to create or use a workspace, connect the required applications or instances through Integration Center, and then open Alert Center to create a rule for the monitored object. A rule can combine a detection condition and duration with severity, labels, annotations, notification contacts, and an effective time window.
Illustrative example, not hands-on tested or configured: an operations team could set a warning rule for a service metric, label it with its environment and owner, attach a runbook URL in an annotation, and send alerts to a webhook or chat group. For automated follow-up, Cloud Monitor can also trigger supported action integrations. The example describes the documented workflow only; no Alibaba Cloud account, workspace, data source, or alert was created.
The value of 2.0 is its cross-signal context: it integrates metrics, logs, traces, and events and relates resources in a common model. The product documentation describes metric aggregation periods with a 60-second minimum; a workspace stores data in the selected region. Its name is globally unique and cannot be changed after creation.
Billing is pay-as-you-go. Enabling Cloud Monitor 2.0 is free, but charges start when connected sources ingest observability data or chargeable features are used; the billing page names remote-write volume and feature use as billing dimensions. Avoid treating activation as a free ongoing plan. Existing Cloud Monitor 1.0 alert notifications do not automatically become 2.0 notification recipients, so teams moving legacy rules should create new rules and recipients in 2.0.
The official UModel guide documents Java, Python, and Go SDKs, plus the umctl command-line tool, for managing workspaces, UModel data, and EntityStores. These are programmatic management interfaces, not proof that every console feature is exposed through the same API.
Strengths
- Combines metrics, logs, traces, and events from Alibaba Cloud observability services in a shared view.
- Can associate alerts with resource context and route them to contacts, chatbots, webhooks, or supported action integrations.
- Offers SDK and command-line interfaces for managing workspaces and UModel data as well as a web console.
Watch out for
- Cloud Monitor 1.0 alert policies and Cloud Monitor 2.0 notification recipients are separate and are not synchronized automatically.
- Enablement is free, but data ingestion and feature usage can incur pay-as-you-go charges whose exact amount depends on the selected components and workload.
Best for
- Alibaba Cloud operators who want a shared view across infrastructure metrics, application traces, logs, and alerts.
- Platform teams centralizing alert rules across cloud services, containers, and application data sources.
Sources
- What Is Cloud Monitor 2.0 | Unified Observability - Cloud Monitor - Alibaba Cloud Documentation Center (Oct 26, 2026)
- Cloud Monitor alert rules - Alibaba Cloud Documentation Center (Oct 26, 2026)
- Billing overview - Cloud Monitor - Alibaba Cloud Documentation Center (Oct 26, 2026)
- API & SDK user guide - Cloud Monitor - Alibaba Cloud Documentation Center (Oct 26, 2026)