SAP-C02 Practice Question: Design Solutions for Organizational Complexity
A company has a centralized logging account and multiple member accounts. The member accounts generate VPC Flow Logs that need to be sent to a central S3 bucket in the logging account. Which TWO steps must be taken to enable this cross-account delivery?
⚠ Common exam trap
Watch out — candidates often assume cross-account access always requires an IAM role (Option B), but VPC Flow Logs use a service principal and bucket policy instead, which is a unique pattern tested in SAP-C02.
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
✓
Add a bucket policy on the central S3 bucket that grants the service principal 'delivery.logs.amazonaws.com' s3:PutObject permission.
The S3 bucket policy must grant the `delivery.logs.amazonaws.com` service principal the `s3:PutObject` permission. This allows the VPC Flow Logs delivery service, which runs in the member accounts, to write log data directly into the central S3 bucket in the logging account without requiring cross-account IAM roles or temporary credentials.
Answer analysis
Option-by-option breakdown
For each option: why learners choose it and why it is or isn't the right answer here.
- ✓
Add a bucket policy on the central S3 bucket that grants the service principal 'delivery.logs.amazonaws.com' s3:PutObject permission.
Why this is correct
This allows the Flow Logs service to write to the bucket.
- ✗
Create an IAM role in the logging account that the member accounts can assume to put objects.
Why it's wrong here
VPC Flow Logs does not use IAM roles for delivery.
- ✗
Create an S3 bucket in each member account to receive Flow Logs, and replicate to the central bucket.
Why it's wrong here
Creating an S3 bucket in each member account and replicating to the central bucket introduces unnecessary complexity and cost, and fails to meet the requirement for direct cross-account delivery of VPC Flow Logs to a single central bucket. This approach is tempting because S3 Cross-Region Replication (CRR) is a valid method for centralising data across accounts when the source bucket already exists, but here the stem demands a single destination bucket from the outset, not an intermediary per-account bucket.
- ✓
Configure VPC Flow Logs in each member account to deliver to the central S3 bucket.
Why this is correct
VPC Flow Logs can be delivered to an S3 bucket in another account.
- ✗
Enable AWS CloudTrail in the management account to aggregate logs.
Why it's wrong here
CloudTrail is for API logs, not VPC Flow Logs.
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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Written by Johnson Ajibi, MSc IT Security
Senior Network & Security Engineer · founder of Courseiva
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