SAA-C03 Design Cost-Optimized Architectures Practice Question
A media processing workflow uses CloudWatch Logs heavily. Retaining all debug logs forever is increasing costs. What should be configured?
⚠ Common exam trap
Test-takers frequently confuse cost optimization with monitoring frequency or compliance aggregation, but the question specifically targets log storage costs, which only retention policies directly address.
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
✓
CloudWatch Logs retention policies per log group
CloudWatch Logs retention policies per log group allow you to set an expiration time (e.g., 30 days) after which log events are automatically deleted. This directly reduces storage costs by preventing debug logs from accumulating indefinitely, without affecting other monitoring or routing functions.
Answer analysis
Option-by-option breakdown
For each option: why learners choose it and why it is or isn't the right answer here.
- ✗
Route 53 health checks
Why it's wrong here
Route 53 health checks monitor the availability and performance of endpoints (HTTP/HTTPS/TCP) to route traffic and trigger DNS failover, but they have no role in managing the lifecycle of CloudWatch Logs data. They can publish status to CloudWatch Alarms, yet they do not delete or expire log events, and they cannot address storage growth or retention requirements. Therefore, they are not a viable solution for automatically cleaning up logs.
- ✓
CloudWatch Logs retention policies per log group
Why this is correct
CloudWatch Logs retention policies are applied per log group and define the exact number of days that log events are kept before they are automatically deleted. By default, logs are set to 'Never Expire,' so configuring a retention period, such as 30 or 90 days, directly reduces log storage costs and helps meet compliance guidelines. This is the correct approach because it specifically automates the deletion of older logs without any external processes.
- ✗
CloudWatch detailed monitoring on all instances
Why it's wrong here
CloudWatch detailed monitoring on all instances enables 1-minute interval metric collection for EC2 instances instead of the standard 5-minute period, which mainly increases CloudWatch charges due to more frequent metric data points. It does not influence the retention or expiration of log events stored in CloudWatch Logs, as metrics and logs are separate services with independent lifecycles. Thus, enabling detailed monitoring merely raises operational cost and fails to solve the logging storage problem.
- ✗
AWS Config aggregation
Why it's wrong here
AWS Config aggregation consolidates configuration snapshots, resource changes, and compliance status from multiple AWS accounts and regions into a single aggregator view. It helps with auditing and compliance but does not control the retention period of CloudWatch Logs; while AWS Config rules can trigger actions, they cannot automatically expire log groups or set log retention policies. Enabling aggregation will only increase visibility of resource configurations, not reduce log storage, so it is not a feasible solution here.
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Written by Johnson Ajibi, MSc IT Security
Senior Network & Security Engineer · founder of Courseiva
This SAA-C03 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 SAA-C03 exam.