Working with AWS VPC Flow Logs to Log and View Network Traffic

AWS VPC Flow Logs is a feature that enables you to capture information about the IP traffic going to and from network interfaces in your Virtual Private Cloud (VPC). This powerful monitoring tool provides visibility into your network traffic patterns, helping organizations identify security threats, troubleshoot connectivity issues, and optimize network performance without requiring additional security appliances or network monitoring solutions.

In this lab, you will implement and utilize VPC Flow Logs to monitor network traffic in your AWS environment. You'll learn how to enable flow logs for a VPC, configure log delivery to CloudWatch Logs, generate network traffic using an EC2 instance, and then analyze the captured logs to troubleshoot connectivity issues.

Objectives

Upon completion of this intermediate level lab, you will be able to:

• Enable and configure VPC Flow Logs for a specific VPC with appropriate settings
• Generate network traffic to observe in the flow logs
• Use CloudWatch Logs to filter and analyze VPC Flow Logs for troubleshooting

Who is this lab for?

This lab is designed for:

• Network administrators seeking to improve monitoring capabilities in AWS environments
• Security professionals interested in tracking and auditing network traffic
• Cloud engineers responsible for troubleshooting VPC connectivity issues
• Solutions architects designing secure and optimized network architectures

Related Labs

• Introduction to Amazon Virtual Private Cloud (VPC)
• Creating your First Lambda Function