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? The design must avoid adding custom operational scripts.
⚠ Common exam trap
Test-takers frequently confuse CloudWatch Logs retention policies with CloudWatch metrics retention or detailed monitoring, thinking that reducing metric granularity will lower log storage costs, when in fact log retention is a separate, per-log-group setting.
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 allow you to set a time-based expiration (e.g., 30 days) on log groups, automatically deleting old log events. This directly reduces storage costs without requiring custom scripts, as the retention policy is a native CloudWatch Logs feature configured per log group.
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 periodically probe an endpoint's availability from multiple locations and conditionally route DNS traffic away from unhealthy resources. They do not touch CloudWatch Logs data, cannot set expiration on log events, and have no mechanism to control storage duration. Therefore, they are irrelevant to a workflow that needs to reduce its CloudWatch Logs footprint.
- ✓
CloudWatch Logs retention policies per log group
Why this is correct
CloudWatch Logs retention policies are configured per log group and automatically delete log events older than the specified interval (e.g., 30 days to 10 years). For a media processing workflow generating heavy log traffic, setting an appropriate retention period directly reduces storage cost and ensures compliance with data-retention requirements. Without a policy, logs default to "Never Expire" and accrue cost indefinitely.
- ✗
CloudWatch detailed monitoring on all instances
Why it's wrong here
CloudWatch detailed monitoring changes EC2 metric collection from 5-minute to 1-minute intervals, improving alarm responsiveness and auto scaling accuracy, but it increases per-metric charges. It has no effect on how many log events are ingested, how long they are kept, or the storage cost of CloudWatch Logs. In fact, enabling detailed monitoring on all instances would raise the overall CloudWatch bill, the opposite of the intended cost control.
- ✗
AWS Config aggregation
Why it's wrong here
AWS Config aggregation is designed to combine configuration items and compliance snapshots across multiple accounts and AWS Regions into a single aggregator account. It helps with security posture and auditing, not with managing CloudWatch Logs log groups or their retention periods. It cannot expire log events and has no authoritative control over log data storage, so it would not help reduce log storage volume.
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Written by Johnson Ajibi, MSc IT Security
Senior Network & Security Engineer · founder of Courseiva
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