Cost Explorer vs AWS Budgets vs Compute Optimizer: which tool

Try 3 questions on this

Pick an answer to see why each option is right or wrong.

1. An account was enabled for Cost Explorer this morning for a cost review tomorrow. The team sees no historical data yet and is preparing to raise a support case, and separately plans to switch Cost Explorer off after the review to avoid any charge. The team needs the historical data for the review without paying anything for Cost Explorer. Which solution meets these requirements?

   Right. In the game that’s Renown for your Design Cost-Optimized Architectures building.

   Not that one: D is right. In the game your Design Cost-Optimized Architectures building would lose a little Renown, and this question would come back later.

   Your answerA.Raise the support case, because historical data should be available once enabled.The preparation takes time by design, which the documentation states.Your answerB.Use the Cost Explorer API instead, which returns the historical data without the wait.The API reads the same prepared data, and it is charged per request.Your answerC.Re-enable Cost Explorer from the payer account so the historical preparation restarts.There is no re-enable: "You can't disable Cost Explorer after you enable it."The answerD.Wait for the data to be prepared, and plan on Cost Explorer staying enabled permanently.Both halves of the team's question are answered on the overview page. On timing: "the current month's data is available for viewing in about 24 hours. The rest of your data takes a few days longer"

   Show the full explanation and doc quotes

   After which "Cost Explorer refreshes your cost data at least once every 24 hours." On switching it off: "you can't disable Cost Explorer after you enable it." Viewing costs nothing - "you can view your costs and usage using the Cost Explorer user interface free of charge" - so the charge the team is worried about applies to the API rather than to the feature being on.

   Written from docs.aws.amazon.com/cost-management/latest/userguide/ce-what-is.html

2. A finance team wants to be told when monthly spend is forecast to exceed a target, and separately when the share of EC2 usage covered by its Savings Plans drops below 80 percent. A solutions architect must say whether one service covers both. Which approach will meet these requirements?

   Right. In the game that’s Renown for your Design Cost-Optimized Architectures building.

   Not that one: B is right. In the game your Design Cost-Optimized Architectures building would lose a little Renown, and this question would come back later.

   Your answerA.Use AWS Budgets for the spend target, and Cost Explorer alarms for Savings Plans coverage.Splits the job across two services because coverage sounds like reporting. Budgets has a coverage budget type for exactly this.The answerB.Use AWS Budgets for both: a cost budget with forecasted alerts, and a Savings Plans coverage budget.Both requirements are budget types in the same service. The list includes "Cost budgets: Set spending limits for services and receive alerts when costs approach or exceed your defined threshold" and "Savings Plans coverage budgets: Define a coverage threshold and get alerted when the percentage of your eligible usage covered by Savings Plans falls below this level." Forecasting is explicit too: "You can choose to be alerted for both actual (after accruing) and forecasted (before accruing) spends." The documented example even matches the second requirement - being "notified through email and Amazon SNS topics when your utilization drops below 80 percent for a given day."Your answerC.Use a CloudWatch billing alarm for both, since billing alarms support cost and coverage thresholds.Overstates billing alarms, which watch an estimated charges metric and know nothing about Savings Plans coverage.Your answerD.Use Cost and Usage Report queries for both, because Budgets tracks only actual accrued spend.Budgets alerts on forecasted spend as well as accrued spend, and the Cost and Usage Report is a detailed export rather than an alerting mechanism.

   Written from docs.aws.amazon.com/cost-management/latest/userguide/budgets-managing-costs.html

3. A company runs EC2 instances, EBS volumes and Lambda functions in one account and wants right-sizing recommendations for all three. The security team forbids installing any software on the instances, and the finance team wants the recommendations to reflect utilisation rather than a fixed idle threshold. Which solution meets these requirements?

   Right. In the game that’s Renown for your Design Cost-Optimized Architectures building.

   Not that one: A is right. In the game your Design Cost-Optimized Architectures building would lose a little Renown, and this question would come back later.

   The answerA.Opt in to AWS Compute Optimizer, which analyses the running resources' specifications and CloudWatch metrics.Compute Optimizer is opt-in and agentless: "After you opt in, AWS Compute Optimizer analyzes the specifications, such as vCPUs, memory, or storage, and the Amazon CloudWatch metrics of your running resources from a period over the last 14 days."Your answerB.Review the AWS Trusted Advisor low utilization Amazon EC2 instances check and act on the instances it lists each week.Trusted Advisor's low-utilisation check is a useful prompt and genuinely agentless, but it is EC2 only and fires on a threshold rather than on a right-sizing analysis.Your answerC.Install the CloudWatch agent on every instance and build a right-sizing dashboard from the memory and CPU metrics it publishes.The agent is how a team collects memory utilisation for its own dashboards. It is not a prerequisite for Compute Optimizer, and here it is prohibited.Your answerD.Group resources with AWS Resource Groups and read the utilisation summary that Cost Explorer produces for each group.Cost Explorer's own right-sizing recommendations exist, but they are EC2 only, and Resource Groups contribute no utilisation analysis at all.

   Show the full explanation and doc quotes

   Supported resources include EC2 instances, EC2 Auto Scaling groups, EBS volumes, Lambda functions, ECS services on Fargate and RDS instances, which covers all three the company named. Nothing is installed on the resource, so the security constraint holds. The analysis can take up to 24 hours to complete before findings appear.

   Written from docs.aws.amazon.com/compute-optimizer/latest/ug/metrics.html