AWS Certified Solutions Architect – Associate (SAA-C03) — Question 14

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 as needed.

Correct answer: C

Explanation

The correct answer is C because Amazon Athena allows for direct querying of data stored in S3 using SQL, which meets the requirement for minimal changes and operational overhead. Options A and D involve more complex setups with additional services that would increase operational overhead. Option B is not suitable since Amazon CloudWatch Logs is intended for log ingestion and not for querying JSON files directly stored in S3.