What service provides monitoring and logging capabilities in AWS, allowing for alarms on thresholds?

The service that provides monitoring and logging capabilities in AWS, including the ability to set alarms based on specified thresholds, is Amazon CloudWatch. This service is integral for monitoring AWS resources and applications, allowing users to collect and track metrics, collect log files, and set alarms.

With CloudWatch, you can create custom metrics for a variety of AWS resources or applications, and set alarms to notify you when these metrics cross defined thresholds. This capability is crucial for maintaining the health and performance of systems running in the cloud, enabling proactive responses to events such as increased CPU usage or declining disk space.

Furthermore, CloudWatch can visualize metrics through dashboards, allowing for real-time monitoring and historical analysis. This comprehensive monitoring service plays a key role in ensuring that AWS environments operate efficiently and effectively.

Other options listed do not provide the same level of monitoring and logging functionality as CloudWatch. For instance, Amazon RDS is focused on managing relational databases, Amazon Route 53 is a scalable Domain Name System (DNS) service, and Amazon VPC is designed for creating virtual private clouds, none of which offer the integrated monitoring and alerting capabilities that CloudWatch provides.