AWS Certified Solutions Architect – Associate (SAA-C02) — Question 745

A company runs several websites on AWS for its different brands. Each website generates tens of gigabytes of web traffic logs each day. A solutions architect needs to design a scalable solution to give the company's developers the ability to analyze traffic patterns across all the company's websites. This analysis by the developers will occur on demand once a week over the course of several months. The solution must support queries with standard SQL.
Which solution will meet these requirements MOST cost-effectively?

Answer options

• A. Store the logs in Amazon S3. Use Amazon Athena for analysis.
• B. Store the logs in Amazon RDS. Use a database client for analysis.
• C. Store the logs in Amazon OpenSearch Service (Amazon Elasticsearch Service). Use Amazon OpenSearch Service (Amazon Elasticsearch Service) for analysis.
• D. Store the logs in an Amazon EMR cluster. Use a supported open-source framework for SQL-based analysis.

Correct answer: A

Explanation

Storing logs in Amazon S3 is highly durable and inexpensive, and Amazon Athena allows developers to run ad-hoc standard SQL queries directly on this data with a pay-per-query pricing model, making it the most cost-effective choice for weekly, on-demand analysis. Options involving Amazon RDS, Amazon OpenSearch Service, or Amazon EMR would incur significant, continuous costs for running active database instances or clusters, even when queries are not being executed. Therefore, the S3 and Athena combination perfectly matches the infrequent, serverless query requirements of this scenario.