This solution is the most cost-effective and scalable for analyzing large amounts of web traffic logs.
Amazon S3: Storing the logs in Amazon S3 is highly scalable, durable, and cost-effective. S3 is designed to handle large-scale data storage, which is ideal for storing tens of gigabytes of log data generated daily by multiple websites.
Amazon Athena: Athena is a serverless, interactive query service that allows you to analyze data in S3 using standard SQL. It works directly with the data stored in S3, so there’s no need to load the data into a database, which saves on costs and reduces complexity. Athena charges based on the amount of data scanned by queries, making it a cost-effective solution for on-demand analysis that only occurs once a week.
Why Not Other Options?:
Option B (Amazon RDS): Storing logs in a relational database like Amazon RDS would be more expensive due to the storage and I/O costs associated with RDS. Additionally, it would require more management overhead.
Option C (Amazon OpenSearch Service): OpenSearch is a good option for full-text search and analytics on log data, but it might be more costly and complex to manage compared to the simplicity and cost-effectiveness of Athena for periodic SQL-based queries.
Option D (Amazon EMR): While EMR can handle large-scale data processing, it involves more operational overhead and might be overkill for the type of ad-hoc, SQL-based analysis required here. Additionally, EMR costs can be higher due to the need to maintain a cluster.
AWS References:
Amazon S3- Information on how to store and manage data in Amazon S3.
Amazon Athena- Documentation on using Amazon Athena for querying data stored in S3 using SQL.