SAP-C02 Practice Question: Design Solutions for Organizational Complexity
A company is designing a centralized logging solution for multiple AWS accounts. The solution must meet compliance requirements that logs be immutable and stored for 7 years. Which THREE services should be combined to achieve this?
⚠ Common exam trap
Many exam-takers confuse Kinesis Data Streams as a storage service for logs, but it is a streaming ingestion layer with no built-in immutability or long-term retention, while Glue is mistakenly chosen for its data cataloging capabilities rather than for log storage.
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
✓
S3 Object Lock
Amazon S3 (D) is the correct storage foundation because it provides durable, highly available object storage where the aggregated logs from all accounts can reside for the 7-year retention period. S3 Object Lock (B) is correct because it enforces WORM (write once, read many) immutability, using retention modes such as Compliance mode to prevent deletion or modification of log objects for the required duration. AWS CloudTrail (C) is correct because it captures API activity and account events across multiple AWS accounts, and with an organization trail it can deliver those logs centrally to the S3 bucket for compliance auditing. AWS Glue (A) is a serverless ETL/catalog service used for data preparation and transformation, not for immutable log retention, so it does not satisfy the requirement. Amazon Kinesis Data Streams (E) is a real-time streaming ingestion service and does not itself provide immutable, 7-year storage, so it is not part of the required combination.
Answer analysis
Option-by-option breakdown
For each option: why learners choose it and why it is or isn't the right answer here.
- ✗
AWS Glue
Why it's wrong here
AWS Glue is a serverless ETL service for cataloguing and transforming data, not for storing logs immutably. It cannot enforce retention or write-once semantics. It would be the right choice for preparing log data for analytics, but the scenario needs Amazon S3 with Object Lock and lifecycle policies.
- ✓
S3 Object Lock
Why this is correct
S3 Object Lock in compliance mode prevents any user, including the root account, from deleting or overwriting objects for a defined retention period. This directly satisfies the immutability requirement, and combined with lifecycle policies it enforces the seven-year retention window.
- ✓
AWS CloudTrail
Why this is correct
CloudTrail records API activity across accounts and delivers the audit events that must be retained. It supplies the log source for the compliance archive, satisfying the requirement to capture management events centrally before they are locked and retained for seven years.
- ✓
Amazon S3
Why this is correct
Amazon S3 provides the durable, centralised store where aggregated logs from all accounts land, and it supports lifecycle policies that transition objects to cheaper storage tiers across the seven-year retention period. It is the storage layer the immutability and retention requirements depend on.
- ✗
Amazon Kinesis Data Streams
Why it's wrong here
Kinesis Data Streams ingests and buffers streaming records for real-time processing, with a default 24-hour retention extendable to 365 days. It cannot store logs immutably for 7 years. It would be correct for real-time log ingestion and delivery, but the compliance requirement demands Amazon S3 with Object Lock.
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
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.