CLF-C02 Billing, Pricing, and Support — Timed 10 Questions

Question 1

A company runs multiple workloads on Amazon EC2 instances. They expect consistent usage for the next three years but want the flexibility to change instance families (for example, from M5 to C5) if performance requirements shift. Which AWS pricing model meets these requirements while providing a significant discount over On-Demand pricing?

Accepted Answer

Compute Savings Plans. Compute Savings Plans (Option B) offer a significant discount (up to 66%) over On-Demand pricing in exchange for a commitment to a consistent amount of compute usage (measured in $/hour) for a 1- or 3-year term. Unlike Reserved Instances, Savings Plans are flexible across instance families (e.g., M5 to C5), regions, OS, and tenancy, making them ideal for workloads that may need to change instance types over time while still receiving a discounted rate.

Answer

Reserved Instances (Standard)

Answer

EC2 Instance Savings Plans

Answer

Spot Instances

Question 2

A company wants to proactively monitor its AWS spending and receive email notifications when actual or forecasted costs exceed a defined threshold. The company has a monthly budget of $10,000 and wants to be alerted when costs reach 80% of the budget. Which AWS service should the company use to meet these requirements?

Accepted Answer

AWS Budgets. AWS Budgets allows you to set custom cost and usage budgets, and configure alerts that trigger when actual or forecasted costs exceed a defined threshold (e.g., 80% of a $10,000 monthly budget). It can send email notifications via Amazon SNS when the threshold is breached, meeting the proactive monitoring requirement.

Answer

AWS Cost Explorer

Answer

AWS Trusted Advisor

Answer

AWS Consolidated Billing

Question 3

A company operates five separate AWS accounts for different business units. The finance team wants to aggregate the usage across all accounts to benefit from volume pricing discounts and to receive a single monthly bill. The company does not need to centrally manage permissions or apply service control policies at this time. Which AWS feature should the company use to meet these requirements?

Accepted Answer

Consolidated Billing through AWS Organizations. AWS Organizations provides Consolidated Billing, which allows a company to aggregate usage across multiple AWS accounts into a single monthly bill. This enables the finance team to benefit from volume pricing discounts because AWS combines usage across all accounts, potentially lowering the overall cost tier. The requirement does not include centralized permission management or service control policies, so the basic Consolidated Billing feature of AWS Organizations is sufficient.

Answer

AWS Cost Explorer

Answer

AWS Budgets

Answer

AWS Trusted Advisor

Question 4

A company wants to review its AWS spending for the past six months to identify which services and business units are driving costs. The finance team needs to interactively examine cost trends, filter by service and account, and visualize the data without setting up complex reports. Which AWS service or tool should the company use to meet these requirements?

Accepted Answer

AWS Cost Explorer. AWS Cost Explorer provides a pre-built, interactive dashboard that allows you to visualize and analyze your AWS cost and usage data over the past 12 months. You can filter by service, linked account (business unit), and time range, and drill down into trends without needing to set up complex reports or queries. This directly meets the requirement for interactive examination of cost trends by service and account.

Answer

AWS Budgets

Answer

AWS Trusted Advisor

Answer

AWS Cost and Usage Reports

Question 5

A company is launching a critical production application on AWS. The operations team requires technical support with a response time of less than 1 hour for urgent system issues. They also need access to AWS Trusted Advisor best practice checks for cost optimization and security. Which AWS Support plan meets these requirements at the lowest cost?

Accepted Answer

AWS Business Support. AWS Business Support provides a response time of less than 1 hour for urgent system issues (production system impaired) and includes full access to AWS Trusted Advisor best practice checks for cost optimization and security. This meets all stated requirements at the lowest cost among the plans that offer these features.

Answer

AWS Developer Support

Answer

AWS Enterprise On-Ramp Support

Answer

AWS Enterprise Support

Question 6

A company operates separate AWS accounts for its engineering, marketing, and finance departments. The CFO wants to consolidate billing to receive a single monthly invoice and to benefit from volume pricing discounts. The security team also requires a centralized mechanism to prevent users in any department from launching Amazon EC2 instances outside of the us-east-1 and eu-west-1 Regions to meet data residency compliance. Which AWS service or feature should the company use to meet both requirements?

Accepted Answer

AWS Organizations with Service Control Policies (SCPs). AWS Organizations allows the company to consolidate multiple AWS accounts under a single management account, enabling consolidated billing for a single monthly invoice and volume pricing discounts. Service Control Policies (SCPs) provide centralized governance by restricting the AWS services and Regions that member accounts can use, such as preventing EC2 instances from being launched outside us-east-1 and eu-west-1. This combination directly addresses both the CFO's billing consolidation needs and the security team's data residency compliance requirements.

Answer

AWS Budgets

Answer

AWS Identity and Access Management (IAM) cross-account roles

Answer

AWS Cost and Usage Reports

Question 7

A company runs a batch processing workload on Amazon EC2 instances. The finance team has set a monthly budget of $10,000 for this workload. They want to automatically stop the batch processing instances if the accumulated costs for the month exceed $8,000, to prevent overspending. The company needs a native AWS solution that can monitor the costs and take corrective action automatically. Which AWS feature should the company use to meet these requirements?

Accepted Answer

AWS Budgets with budget actions configured to stop EC2 instances. AWS Budgets allows you to set a cost budget of $8,000 and attach a budget action that triggers an AWS Systems Manager (SSM) automation document to stop EC2 instances when actual or forecasted costs exceed the threshold. This provides a native, automated, and serverless solution to enforce cost controls without manual intervention.

Answer

AWS Cost Explorer with a custom cost threshold report

Answer

AWS Trusted Advisor with a cost optimization check

Answer

AWS Organizations with a service control policy (SCP)

Question 8

A company runs a mix of Amazon EC2 instances and AWS Fargate containers. The CFO wants to reduce costs by committing to a consistent amount of compute usage (measured in $ per hour) for a 1-year term. The company expects to change instance families and regions occasionally and needs the flexibility to apply the savings to both EC2 and ECS Fargate usage. Which AWS pricing option should the company choose?

Accepted Answer

Compute Savings Plans. Compute Savings Plans offer the flexibility to cover EC2 instance and Fargate usage across any region, instance family, or compute type, while providing a discounted hourly rate in exchange for a 1-year commitment. This matches the CFO's requirement to reduce costs with a consistent $/hour commitment and the need to change instance families and regions occasionally, as Compute Savings Plans automatically apply to any eligible compute usage without requiring specific reservations.

Answer

EC2 Instance Savings Plans

Answer

Reserved Instances (Convertible)

Answer

On-Demand Instances

Question 9

A company is planning to migrate its on-premises data center to AWS. The Chief Financial Officer wants to compare the total cost of ownership (TCO) of the current on-premises infrastructure against running equivalent workloads on AWS. The company needs a tool that allows them to input details about their existing servers, storage, and network usage to generate a detailed cost comparison report. Which AWS tool should the company use to meet this requirement?

Accepted Answer

AWS Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) Calculator. The AWS Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) Calculator is specifically designed to compare the costs of on-premises infrastructure with AWS by allowing users to input details about their existing servers, storage, and network usage. It generates a detailed report that highlights potential savings from migrating to AWS, directly addressing the CFO's requirement for a cost comparison.

Answer

AWS Pricing Calculator

Answer

AWS Budgets

Answer

AWS Cost Explorer

Question 10

A company uses AWS Organizations with separate accounts for development, testing, and production. The finance team wants to track monthly spending by internal project, but a single project may use resources across multiple accounts. The team has applied a 'Project' tag to all resources. They need a detailed billing report that shows costs grouped by this Project tag, combining data from all accounts. Which AWS feature should they enable to meet this requirement?

Accepted Answer

AWS Cost and Usage Reports with cost allocation tags activated. AWS Cost and Usage Reports (CUR) with cost allocation tags activated is the correct choice because it provides the most detailed billing data, including all tags, and can be delivered to an S3 bucket for analysis. This allows the finance team to group costs by the 'Project' tag across all accounts in the AWS Organization, meeting the requirement for a detailed, combined report.

Answer

AWS Consolidated Billing

Answer

AWS Cost Explorer with tag filtering

Answer

AWS Budgets with tag-based alerts