AWS Certified Solutions Architect – Associate (SAA-C02) — Question 742

A company needs the ability to analyze the log files of its proprietary application. The logs are stored in JSON format in an Amazon S3 bucket. Queries will be simple and will run on-demand. A solutions architect needs to perform the analysis with minimal changes to the existing architecture.
What should the solutions architect do to meet these requirements with the LEAST amount of operational overhead?

Answer options

• A. Use Amazon Redshift to load all the content into one place and run the SQL queries as needed.
• B. Use Amazon CloudWatch Logs to store the logs. Run SQL queries as needed from the Amazon CloudWatch console.
• C. Use Amazon Athena directly with Amazon S3 to run the queries as needed.
• D. Use AWS Glue to catalog the logs. Use a transient Apache Spark cluster on Amazon EMR to run the SQL queries ad needed.

Correct answer: C

Explanation

Amazon Athena is a serverless query service that allows users to analyze data in Amazon S3 directly using standard SQL, offering the lowest operational overhead. Option A and Option D introduce unnecessary management overhead by requiring the provisioning of Amazon Redshift or Amazon EMR clusters. Option B is inefficient and adds overhead because the logs are already stored in S3, making a migration to CloudWatch Logs redundant.