Question

A developer maintains a distributed application composed of an API Gateway REST API, a front-end Lambda function, an SQS queue, and a downstream processing Lambda function. Customers occasionally report failed requests, but the team cannot trace an individual customer request across all four components because each service logs independently to its own CloudWatch Logs group. What is the MOST effective way to enable end-to-end tracing of a single request across these services?

Accepted Answer

Generate a unique correlation ID at the API entry point, propagate it through the SQS message attributes and Lambda payloads, and include it in every structured log statement.

Answer

Enable CloudWatch Logs Insights and query all four log groups simultaneously using the request timestamp to correlate entries.

Answer

Increase the CloudWatch Logs retention period on all four log groups so older entries remain available for manual correlation.

Answer

Configure a single shared CloudWatch Logs group and have all four services write their logs to it.