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Cloud Computing · Intermediate

VPC Flow Logs

Feature that captures metadata about IP traffic going to and from network interfaces in a virtual network.

Definition

AWS VPC Flow Logs record source and destination addresses, ports, protocol, packets, bytes and ACCEPT/REJECT action at VPC, subnet or ENI level, publishing to CloudWatch Logs, S3 or Amazon Data Firehose. They do not capture packet payloads. Azure (virtual network flow logs) and Google Cloud offer equivalent features.

Example

Flow logs show REJECT records for traffic to port 22, revealing a security group blocking an admin connection.

Exam tip

Flow logs are for troubleshooting connectivity and security analysis; use traffic mirroring when packet contents are needed.

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