SAP-C02 Practice Question: Design Solutions for Organizational Complexity
A company is using AWS Organizations with consolidated billing. They want to track costs by department, where each department has its own AWS account. Which service should they use to tag resources with department IDs and view cost breakdowns?
⚠ Common exam trap
Watch out — candidates often confuse 'tag-based filtering' (which is not a native Cost Explorer feature) with 'cost allocation tags' (the correct mechanism), leading candidates to pick Option C instead of D.
Answer choices
Why each option matters
Answer the question above first, then reveal the full breakdown to understand why each option is right or wrong.
Correct answer & explanation
✓
AWS Cost Explorer with cost allocation tags.
Cost allocation tags in AWS allow you to tag resources (e.g., EC2 instances, S3 buckets) with department IDs and then use AWS Cost Explorer to view cost breakdowns by those tags. This directly meets the requirement to track costs per department account within AWS Organizations with consolidated billing.
Answer analysis
Option-by-option breakdown
For each option: why learners choose it and why it is or isn't the right answer here.
- ✗
AWS Budgets with tag-based filters.
Why it's wrong here
Budgets can use tags, but the primary purpose is budgeting, not detailed cost reporting.
- ✗
AWS Trusted Advisor cost optimization checks.
Why it's wrong here
Trusted Advisor provides recommendations, not cost breakdowns by tag.
- ✗
AWS Cost Explorer with tag-based filtering.
Why it's wrong here
Cost Explorer can filter by tags, but it does not enforce tagging; tags must be applied manually or via other means.
- ✓
AWS Cost Explorer with cost allocation tags.
Why this is correct
Cost allocation tags (user-defined) can be applied to resources and used in Cost Explorer to break down costs by department.
Quick reference
AWS S3 Storage Class Comparison
| Storage Class | Min Duration | Retrieval | Use Case |
|---|---|---|---|
| S3 Standard | None | Immediate | Frequently accessed data |
| S3 Standard-IA | 30 days | Immediate | Infrequent access, rapid retrieval |
| S3 One Zone-IA | 30 days | Immediate | Non-critical infrequent data |
| S3 Intelligent-Tiering | None | Immediate–hours | Unknown or changing access patterns |
| S3 Glacier Instant | 90 days | Milliseconds | Archive with instant retrieval |
| S3 Glacier Flexible | 90 days | Minutes–hours | Archive, flexible retrieval |
| S3 Glacier Deep Archive | 180 days | Hours | Long-term compliance archive |
Go deeper
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JA
Written by Johnson Ajibi, MSc IT Security
Senior Network & Security Engineer · founder of Courseiva
This SAP-C02 practice question is part of Courseiva's free Amazon Web Services certification practice question bank. Courseiva provides original exam-style practice questions with explanations, topic-based practice, mock exams, readiness tracking, and study analytics to help learners prepare for the SAP-C02 exam.