Amazon SOA-C03 Exam - Topic 2 Question 1 Discussion

Actual exam question for Amazon's SOA-C03 exam

Question #: 1
Topic #: 2

Optimization]

A company has a workload that is sending log data to Amazon CloudWatch Logs. One of the fields includes a measure of application latency. A CloudOps engineer needs to monitor the p90 statistic of this field over time.

What should the CloudOps engineer do to meet this requirement?

ACreate an Amazon CloudWatch Contributor Insights rule on the log data.

BCreate a metric filter on the log data.

CCreate a subscription filter on the log data.

DCreate an Amazon CloudWatch Application Insights rule for the workload.

Show Suggested Answer

Suggested Answer: B

To analyze and visualize custom statistics such as the p90 latency (90th percentile), a CloudWatch metric must be generated from the log data. The correct method is to create a metric filter that extracts the latency value from each log event and publishes it as a CloudWatch metric. Once the metric is published, percentile statistics (p90, p95, etc.) can be displayed in CloudWatch dashboards or alarms.

AWS documentation states:

''You can use metric filters to extract numerical fields from log events and publish them as metrics in CloudWatch. CloudWatch supports percentile statistics such as p90 and p95 for these metrics.''

Contributor Insights (Option A) is for analyzing frequent contributors, not numeric distributions. Subscription filters (Option C) are used for log streaming, and Application Insights (Option D) provides monitoring of application health but not custom p90 statistics. Hence, Option B is the CloudOps-aligned, minimal-overhead solution for percentile latency monitoring.

References (AWS CloudOps Documents / Study Guide):

* AWS Certified CloudOps Engineer -- Associate (SOA-C03) Exam Guide -- Domain 1: Monitoring and Logging

* Amazon CloudWatch Logs -- Metric Filters

* AWS Well-Architected Framework -- Operational Excellence Pillar

by Celeste at Oct 30, 2025, 09:13 AM

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Brande

2 months ago

Option B is straightforward. We need to focus on that p90 latency specifically.

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Karima

2 months ago

I’m leaning towards D. Application Insights might provide more context for the workload.

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Lemuel

2 months ago

I agree, but option A could also work. Contributor Insights gives great visibility.

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Mi

3 months ago

D seems like overkill for just monitoring latency.

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Lakeesha

3 months ago

Definitely B, metric filters are perfect for this!

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Elenor

3 months ago

Wait, can you even get p90 from a subscription filter?

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Tonette

3 months ago

I think A could work too, but not for p90 specifically.

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Yen

3 months ago

B) Create a metric filter on the log data. Bingo! That's the way to go. Metric filters are perfect for extracting and monitoring specific metrics from log data.

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Jamal

4 months ago

C) Create a subscription filter on the log data. Subscription filters are great, but I don't think that's the best way to monitor a specific statistic like the p90.

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Lamar

4 months ago

A) Create an Amazon CloudWatch Contributor Insights rule on the log data. Interesting, but I'm not sure that would give us the specific p90 statistic we need.

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Gianna

4 months ago

D) Create an Amazon CloudWatch Application Insights rule for the workload. Hmm, I'm not sure that's the right approach here. Isn't Application Insights more for application performance monitoring?

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Gayla

4 months ago

I feel like using Contributor Insights might be overkill for just monitoring p90 latency. A metric filter seems more straightforward for this task.

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Kimi

4 months ago

I think option B is the best choice. Metric filters are perfect for extracting specific data.

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Kerry

4 months ago

B) Create a metric filter on the log data. This is the correct answer, as it allows the CloudOps engineer to monitor the p90 statistic over time.

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Nichelle

5 months ago

B is the way to go for p90 stats!

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Bev

5 months ago

I'm a bit confused about the difference between a subscription filter and a metric filter. Wouldn't a subscription filter just send the logs somewhere else?

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Francesco

5 months ago

I remember practicing a similar question where we had to monitor metrics, and I think a metric filter was the right choice then too.

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Stephen

5 months ago

I think we need to create a metric filter to extract the p90 latency from the logs, but I'm not entirely sure if that's the best approach.

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Lon

6 months ago

I'm pretty confident that the answer is B) Create a metric filter on the log data. Metric filters allow you to extract specific metrics from log data, and the p90 statistic is exactly the kind of thing you'd want to monitor using this approach.

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Lisbeth

6 months ago

Okay, let me think this through. I know that Contributor Insights can be used to analyze log data and extract metrics, so that might be the way to go here. I'll need to double-check the details, but that's the option that stands out to me.

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Pearly

6 months ago

Hmm, this one seems tricky. I'm not super familiar with CloudWatch Insights and Application Insights, so I'd need to do some research on those features to figure out which one is best for monitoring the p90 statistic.

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Marge

6 months ago

I think I'd start by looking at the options and trying to understand what each one does. Creating a metric filter or subscription filter sounds like it could be relevant, but I'm not sure if that's the best approach for monitoring a specific statistic over time.

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