ANS-C01 Network Management and Operations Practice Question
A company has a multi-account AWS environment with hundreds of VPCs connected via a transit gateway. The network team needs to centrally monitor network traffic and detect anomalies such as unusual outbound data transfers. Which combination of services would provide the most scalable and cost-effective solution?
⚠ Common exam trap
Watch out — candidates often assume CloudWatch Logs is the only or best destination for VPC Flow Logs, overlooking the cost and scalability advantages of S3 combined with Athena for large-scale, cross-account analysis.
Answer choices
Why each option matters
Answer the question above first, then reveal the full breakdown to understand why each option is right or wrong.
Correct answer & explanation
✓
Enable VPC Flow Logs in each VPC, publish to Amazon S3, and use Amazon Athena to query logs from a central account
VPC Flow Logs capture IP traffic metadata at scale, and publishing to Amazon S3 provides a cost-effective, durable storage layer. Using Amazon Athena to query the logs from a central account enables serverless, on-demand analysis across hundreds of VPCs without provisioning servers, making it both scalable and cost-effective for anomaly detection.
Answer analysis
Option-by-option breakdown
For each option: why learners choose it and why it is or isn't the right answer here.
- ✗
Use AWS Trusted Advisor to check for unusual traffic patterns
Why it's wrong here
Trusted Advisor does not provide granular flow analysis.
- ✗
Enable VPC Flow Logs in each VPC, publish to CloudWatch Logs, and create cross-account CloudWatch dashboards
Why it's wrong here
CloudWatch Logs can become expensive at scale.
- ✗
Use AWS Network Manager to monitor all VPCs and Transit Gateway attachments
Why it's wrong here
Network Manager provides topology but not detailed anomaly detection.
- ✓
Enable VPC Flow Logs in each VPC, publish to Amazon S3, and use Amazon Athena to query logs from a central account
Why this is correct
S3 is cost-effective for storage and Athena allows querying across accounts.
Quick reference
AWS S3 Storage Class Comparison
| Storage Class | Min Duration | Retrieval | Use Case |
|---|---|---|---|
| S3 Standard | None | Immediate | Frequently accessed data |
| S3 Standard-IA | 30 days | Immediate | Infrequent access, rapid retrieval |
| S3 One Zone-IA | 30 days | Immediate | Non-critical infrequent data |
| S3 Intelligent-Tiering | None | Immediate–hours | Unknown or changing access patterns |
| S3 Glacier Instant | 90 days | Milliseconds | Archive with instant retrieval |
| S3 Glacier Flexible | 90 days | Minutes–hours | Archive, flexible retrieval |
| S3 Glacier Deep Archive | 180 days | Hours | Long-term compliance archive |
Go deeper
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JA
Written by Johnson Ajibi, MSc IT Security
Senior Network & Security Engineer · founder of Courseiva
This ANS-C01 practice question is part of Courseiva's free Amazon Web Services certification practice question bank. Courseiva provides original exam-style practice questions with explanations, topic-based practice, mock exams, readiness tracking, and study analytics to help learners prepare for the ANS-C01 exam.