VPC Flow Logs

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VPC Flow Logs

VPC Flow Logs is a feature that enables you to capture information about the IP traffic going to andfrom network interfaces in your VPC. Flow log data can be published to Amazon CloudWatch Logs and Amazon S3. After you've created a flow log, you can retrieve and view its data in the chosen destination. Flow logs can help you with a number of tasks; for example, to troubleshoot why specific traffic is not reaching an instance, which in turn helps you diagnose overly restrictive security group rules. You can also use flow logs as a security tool to monitor the traffic that is reaching your instance.

You can create a flow log for a VPC, a subnet, or a network interface. If you create a flow log for a subnet or VPC, each network interface in the VPC or subnet is monitored. Flow log data for a monitored network interface is recorded as flow log records, which are log events

consisting of fields that describe the traffic flow