Compliance requires retaining application logs for 7 years, but CloudWatch Logs costs too much at that horizon. What's the cost-efficient archive pattern?
A.Keep logs in CloudWatch with 7-year retention
7 years in CloudWatch is the expensive answer.
B.Export logs to S3 with lifecycle policies to Glacier Deep Archive
S3 + lifecycle to Deep Archive. Correct.
C.Reduce log verbosity to save cost
Verbosity changes what you keep — not where archives live.
D.Use metric filters instead of storage
Metric filters extract metrics — they don't store logs.
Why this answer
Export logs to S3 (subscription filters to Kinesis Firehose or scheduled export) and lifecycle them to Glacier Deep Archive for pennies/GB — the standard long-retention cost pattern. CloudWatch retention is priced for operational use, not archival.
Correct answer: B · Last reviewed 2026-11-05
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