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A company has migrated to AWS and uses multiple accounts under AWS Organizations with consolidated billing. The finance team needs a monthly cost breakdown by business unit. Each business unit's AWS resources are tagged with a 'BusinessUnit' tag (e.g., 'Marketing', 'Engineering'). However, some resources are not tagged. The team wants to see both the cost per business unit (based on tagged resources) and the total cost of untagged resources, all in one view. They also need the ability to filter by AWS service (e.g., EC2, S3) for each business unit. Which AWS tool or feature should the finance team use to meet these requirements?

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A company has migrated to AWS and uses multiple accounts under AWS Organizations with consolidated billing. The finance team needs a monthly cost breakdown by business unit. Each business unit's AWS resources are tagged with a 'BusinessUnit' tag (e.g., 'Marketing', 'Engineering'). However, some resources are not tagged. The team wants to see both the cost per business unit (based on tagged resources) and the total cost of untagged resources, all in one view. They also need the ability to filter by AWS service (e.g., EC2, S3) for each business unit. Which AWS tool or feature should the finance team use to meet these requirements?

Answer choices

Why each option matters

Good practice is not just finding the correct option. The wrong answers often show the exact trap the exam wants you to fall into.

A

Best answer

AWS Cost Explorer

Correct. Cost Explorer provides a customizable dashboard where you can group costs by tags, filter by service, and see untagged costs. It supports the required granularity for multi-account consolidated billing views.

B

Distractor review

AWS Budgets

Incorrect. AWS Budgets enables you to set cost or usage budgets and receive alerts when thresholds are exceeded. It does not provide an interactive cost breakdown or grouping by custom tags.

C

Distractor review

AWS Trusted Advisor

Incorrect. AWS Trusted Advisor inspects your AWS environment and makes recommendations in areas such as cost optimization, performance, and security. It does not allow you to generate custom cost reports grouped by tags.

D

Distractor review

AWS Monthly Report (from Billing console)

Incorrect. The AWS Monthly Report provides a summary of charges by service and by account under consolidated billing, but it does not offer filtering or grouping by custom resource tags, nor does it show untagged costs separately.

Common exam trap

Common exam trap: answer the scenario, not the keyword

Many certification questions include familiar terms but test a specific constraint. Read the exact wording before choosing an answer that is generally true but wrong for this case.

Technical deep dive

How to think about this question

This question should be treated as a scenario, not a definition check. Identify the problem, the constraint and the best action. Then compare each option against those facts.

KKey Concepts to Remember

  • Read the scenario before looking for a memorised answer.
  • Find the constraint that changes the correct option.
  • Eliminate answers that are true in general but not in this case.
  • Use explanations to understand the rule behind the answer.

TExam Day Tips

  • Underline the problem statement mentally.
  • Watch for words such as best, first, most likely and least administrative effort.
  • Review why wrong options are wrong, not only why the correct option is correct.

Related practice questions

Related CLF-C02 practice-question pages

Use these pages to review the topic behind this question. This is how one missed question becomes focused revision.

More questions from this exam

Keep practising from the same exam bank, or move into a focused topic page if this question exposed a weak area.

Question 1

A developer needs to launch a test server for a new application prototype. The developer logs into the AWS Management Console, selects an Amazon EC2 instance type, configures the security group, and starts the instance. The instance is running within two minutes, and the developer did not need to submit a formal request to the company's IT procurement team or wait for approval from a cloud administrator. Which essential characteristic of cloud computing does this scenario best demonstrate?

Question 2

A solutions architect is planning a new web application on AWS. The workload will include 3 Amazon EC2 instances (t3.medium) running 24/7, an Application Load Balancer, and an Amazon RDS for MySQL db.t3.small database. The architect needs to estimate the monthly cost for the first year, considering different purchasing options (On-Demand, 1-year All Upfront Reserved Instance, and Compute Savings Plan). Which AWS tool should the architect use to create this estimate?

Question 3

A company's development team frequently needs temporary test environments. A developer can log into the AWS Management Console, select an Amazon EC2 instance type, configure storage, and launch the instance within minutes without any interaction with the IT infrastructure team. This capability is an example of which essential characteristic of cloud computing?

Question 4

A company's finance team needs to analyze AWS spending in detail. They require a report that includes hourly cost data for each AWS service, each individual resource (e.g., a specific EC2 instance), and any cost allocation tags applied. The team plans to export this data to an Amazon S3 bucket and then import it into a custom business intelligence (BI) analytics dashboard. Which AWS tool should the finance team use to generate this level of detailed cost data?

Question 5

A company uses AWS for its development environment. The finance team wants to set a monthly budget of $10,000. They want to receive an email notification when the actual costs reach 80% of the budget ($8,000) and again when costs exceed the budget. The team needs a managed AWS service that can automatically send these alerts without requiring custom code or third-party tools. Which AWS service should the team use?

Question 6

A company uses AWS Organizations to manage multiple accounts. The security team needs to enforce a policy that restricts SSH access (port 22) from the internet (0.0.0.0/0) in all VPCs across all accounts. The team wants to centrally define the allowed rules and automatically apply them to newly created VPCs and security groups, while also automatically remediating any existing non-compliant security groups. Which AWS service should the team use?

FAQ

Questions learners often ask

What does this CLF-C02 question test?

Read the scenario before looking for a memorised answer.

What is the correct answer to this question?

The correct answer is: AWS Cost Explorer — AWS Cost Explorer is a tool that allows you to visualize, understand, and manage your AWS costs and usage over time. It supports filtering by tags (including custom tags like 'BusinessUnit'), AWS service, and other dimensions. Cost Explorer can group costs by tag value and also includes an 'Untagged' group for resources that do not have the specified tag. This meets the requirement for seeing both business unit costs and untagged costs in one view. AWS Budgets is used for setting budget thresholds and alerts, not for detailed cost exploration. AWS Trusted Advisor provides cost optimization recommendations but does not allow custom cost breakdowns. The AWS Monthly Report (in the Billing console) provides summary data at the account level but lacks the granularity to filter by tags or individual resources across multiple accounts.

What should I do if I get this CLF-C02 question wrong?

Then try more questions from the same exam bank and focus on understanding why the wrong options are tempting.

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