SAP-C02 Practice Question: Design Solutions for Organizational Complexity
A company has a multi-account AWS environment with a centralized logging account. The security team needs to analyze VPC Flow Logs from all accounts using Amazon Athena. Which THREE steps are required to enable this analysis? (Choose THREE.)
⚠ Common exam trap
Candidates often think converting to Parquet or replicating across regions is mandatory, but AWS allows direct querying of GZIP text files in a single centralized S3 bucket without additional transformation or replication.
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
✓
Create an AWS Glue table or use Athena's CREATE TABLE statement to define the schema of the Flow Logs.
Athena requires a schema definition to query data in S3. You can either create an AWS Glue table (which is a managed schema catalog) or use Athena's CREATE TABLE statement to define the schema for VPC Flow Logs, including fields like version, account-id, interface-id, srcaddr, dstaddr, etc. Without this schema, Athena cannot parse the raw flow log data.
Answer analysis
Option-by-option breakdown
For each option: why learners choose it and why it is or isn't the right answer here.
- ✓
Create an AWS Glue table or use Athena's CREATE TABLE statement to define the schema of the Flow Logs.
Why this is correct
Athena needs a table definition to query the data.
- ✓
Ensure the Flow Logs are delivered in GZIP format (default) or uncompressed.
Why this is correct
Athena supports GZIP compressed CSV files.
- ✓
Deliver VPC Flow Logs from each account to a centralized S3 bucket in the logging account.
Why this is correct
Centralized storage is needed for cross-account analysis.
- ✗
Replicate the S3 bucket to a single AWS Region for consistency.
Why it's wrong here
Flow Logs should be delivered to a single region; cross-region replication adds latency and cost.
- ✗
Configure a Kinesis Data Firehose delivery stream to convert Flow Logs to Parquet format.
Why it's wrong here
Parquet conversion is optional but not required; Athena can query GZIP CSV.
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 SAP-C02 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 SAP-C02 exam.