AWS Certified SysOps Administrator – AssociateMonitoring, Logging, and RemediationMedium

A company uses a serverless application consisting of AWS Lambda functions, Amazon API Gateway, and Amazon DynamoDB. They need to trace requests end-to-end to identify performance bottlenecks and errors across these services. The solution should provide a visual service map and detailed trace data for each request. Which AWS service is best suited for this requirement?

  1. AAmazon EventBridge
  2. BAmazon CloudWatch Logs Insights
  3. CAWS X-Ray
  4. DAWS Trusted Advisor
Show answer & explanation

Correct answer: C. AWS X-Ray

AWS X-Ray is a service that helps developers analyze and debug distributed applications, such as those built using microservices. It provides end-to-end tracing, a service map to visualize application components and their interactions, and detailed trace data to pinpoint performance bottlenecks and errors.

Why the other options are wrong

  • A. EventBridge is an event bus service for routing events between services; it does not provide application performance monitoring or tracing.
  • B. CloudWatch Logs Insights is for querying and analyzing log data, not for end-to-end distributed tracing and service mapping.
  • D. Trusted Advisor provides recommendations for cost optimization, security, performance, and fault tolerance; it is not a tracing or monitoring service.

AWS X-Ray for Distributed Tracing

AWS X-Ray is a distributed tracing service that helps you analyze and debug production, distributed applications, such as those built using microservices. It provides an end-to-end view of requests as they travel through your application.

  • End-to-end request tracing.
  • Visual service map of application components.
  • Identifies performance bottlenecks and errors.
  • Supports various AWS services (Lambda, API Gateway, EC2, ECS).

Memory trick: X-Ray 'sees through' your app to trace every step.

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