Dashboards in a central monitoring account must show metrics, logs and traces from 20 workload accounts without copying data. What should be configured?
Show answer and explanation
Answer: A
CloudWatch cross-account observability is built exactly for this: the monitoring account defines a sink, each source account creates a link attaching its telemetry, and the central account can then query the source accounts' metrics, logs, and traces directly in its dashboards. The data stays in place — nothing is copied or re-ingested.
Why the other options are wrong
- B. Subscription filters only move log events somewhere else (in fact copying them), and cover logs only — never metrics or traces.
- C. A Grafana stack with hand-managed keys is a custom integration to build and secure, and it duplicates access plumbing that OAM provides natively.
- D. A Lambda that copies metrics loads every data point a second time — literally the thing the requirement rules out — and adds running code to maintain.