SOA-C03 - Networking and Content Delivery - Section 5.5

Troubleshoot VPC connectivity and interpret networking logs including VPC Flow Logs, Elastic Load Balancing access logs, AWS WAF logs and CloudFront logs.

Troubleshoot VPC connectivity by interpreting VPC Flow Logs and running VPC Reachability Analyzer to identify blocked paths through route tables, security groups, and network ACLs. Correlate Elastic Load Balancing access logs and CloudFront logs to isolate whether a connectivity or latency issue originates at the origin, the load balancer, or the edge.

VPC Flow LogsVPC Reachability AnalyzerElastic Load Balancing access logsCloudFront logs

Practice question for this objective

Free sampleNetworking and Content Deliveryhard

A global web property is served through Amazon CloudFront with an Application Load Balancer origin. A subset of viewers in one geography report sporadic HTTP 502 responses, and operators must determine for each failed request whether CloudFront failed to obtain a usable response from the origin or whether the load balancer itself returned the error after talking to its targets. The team wants the two log sources that together let them attribute each 502 to the correct tier with the least new tooling. Which two log sources should they enable and examine? (Select TWO.)

  • ACloudFront standard access logs delivered to Amazon S3, which record the edge result type and the status CloudFront returned to the viewer for each request, including origin-side failures. Correct
  • BVPC Flow Logs on the load balancer subnets, which record the accepted and rejected IP flows so the team can read the HTTP status code returned for each affected request.
  • CAWS CloudTrail management event logs, which record the API calls made against the distribution and the load balancer so each 502 can be traced to the responsible configuration change.
  • DElastic Load Balancing access logs from the Application Load Balancer, which record the elb_status_code and target_status_code along with the processing times for each request reaching the origin. Correct
  • EAWS WAF logs from a web ACL on the distribution, which record the rule that matched each request so the team can confirm whether a managed rule blocked the affected viewers.
To attribute CloudFront 502 errors to the right tier, read CloudFront access logs for the edge result and Elastic Load Balancing access logs for target status codes. Pinpointing where a 502 arises needs request-level results at each tier. CloudFront standard access logs report the result type and the status returned to the viewer, isolating failures where the edge could not get a usable origin response. Elastic Load Balancing access logs add elb_status_code and target_status_code, distinguishing a load balancer-generated error from a bad target response. VPC Flow Logs hold no HTTP status, CloudTrail records only API activity, and WAF logs describe rule matches for blocked traffic rather than origin gateway failures, so none of those three can attribute a 502 to a tier.

Why A is correct: CloudFront access logs show the result type and viewer-facing status per request, letting the team see which 502s CloudFront generated because it could not get a usable response from the origin.

Why B is wrong: Flow logs capture IP-level accept and reject actions but contain no HTTP status code, so they cannot attribute a 502 to either the distribution or the load balancer tier.

Why C is wrong: CloudTrail records control-plane API activity, not the data-plane request results, so it never shows the per-request status codes needed to locate where the 502 originated.

Why D is correct: Load balancer access logs expose both the status the load balancer returned and the status its target returned, so the team can tell whether the 502 came from the targets or the balancer.

Why E is wrong: WAF logs explain blocked or allowed requests by rule match, but a 502 is an origin or gateway failure rather than a WAF block, so these logs do not attribute the error to a tier.

See more SOA-C03 practice questions, answers explained.

More in this domain

Back to all Networking and Content Delivery objectives, or the SOA-C03 cert hub.

Examworthy is not affiliated with or endorsed by Amazon Web Services. Original, blueprint-aligned practice material only.