A media company runs a 24/7 recommendation engine on EC2 in one AWS Region. The workload is interruption-intolerant, and the team expects steady usage but may change instance families and sizes during planned optimizations. Compared to the current On-Demand setup, they want the lowest cost while avoiding the rigidity of locking to a specific instance type.
What should the solutions architect recommend?
Answer choices
Good practice is not just finding the correct option. The wrong answers often show the exact trap the exam wants you to fall into.
Switch the instances to Spot Instances and use interruption handling because it is the largest discount.
Spot Instances provide strong discounts, but interruption tolerance is required, which the workload lacks.
Purchase a Compute Savings Plan for the expected steady hourly usage in that Region.
Compute Savings Plans discount the usage while allowing flexibility across instance families and sizes in the Region.
Purchase a Standard Reserved Instance tied to a single specific instance type for the next 3 years.
Standard RIs can reduce cost, but they are less flexible when the team needs instance-type changes.
Keep On-Demand and rely on Auto Scaling to reduce capacity when utilization is low.
Auto Scaling can help, but for interruption-intolerant 24/7 usage it usually cannot match Savings Plans.
Common exam trap
NAT is not only about the public address. The inside/outside interface roles and the ACL or rule that matches traffic are just as important.
Technical deep dive
NAT questions usually test address translation, overload/PAT behaviour, static mappings and whether the right traffic is being translated. Read the interface direction and address terms carefully.
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Keep practising from the same exam bank, or move into a focused topic page if this question exposed a weak area.
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FAQ
Static NAT maps one inside address to one outside address.
The correct answer is: Purchase a Compute Savings Plan for the expected steady hourly usage in that Region. — A Compute Savings Plan is the best fit because it provides discounted rates for a consistent hourly commitment without tying the organization to a specific instance type. Since the recommendation engine cannot tolerate interruptions, Spot is not viable. Standard Reserved Instances can be cheaper than On-Demand, but they are commonly selected when instance type remains stable; here the team expects planned changes. Auto Scaling reduces cost only when it can safely scale down, which does not fully address 24/7 commitment needs. Why others are wrong: Spot is discounted but requires interruption tolerance or robust stop/start handling, which is incompatible with this 24/7 interruption-intolerant service. Standard Reserved Instances are tied to instance attributes and therefore reduce flexibility when instance families or sizes change. Keeping On-Demand and using Auto Scaling may lower some usage, but it typically cannot produce the guaranteed discount of a committed spend plan for steady workloads.
Then try more questions from the same exam bank and focus on understanding why the wrong options are tempting.
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