SOA-C02 Cost and Performance Optimization Practice Question
A SysOps administrator wants to identify Amazon EC2 instances that are underutilized to reduce costs. The administrator needs recommendations for rightsizing instances based on historical CPU and memory usage. Which AWS service provides these recommendations?
⚠ Common exam trap
It's easy for candidates to confuse AWS Trusted Advisor's cost checks (like idle instances) with Compute Optimizer's rightsizing recommendations, but Trusted Advisor does not analyze historical CPU and memory usage for instance type changes.
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 Compute Optimizer
AWS Compute Optimizer is the correct service because it analyzes historical utilization metrics (CPU, memory, I/O, and network throughput) from Amazon CloudWatch and generates rightsizing recommendations for EC2 instances. It uses machine learning to identify underutilized instances and suggests instance types that better match workload requirements, directly addressing the need to reduce costs through rightsizing.
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 Cost Explorer
Why it's wrong here
Cost Explorer provides cost and usage data and has rightsizing recommendations based on CloudWatch metrics, but it is less specialized than Compute Optimizer for this specific requirement. Compute Optimizer is the primary service for rightsizing.
- ✗
AWS Trusted Advisor
Why it's wrong here
AWS Trusted Advisor provides a set of cost optimization checks, including "Underutilized Amazon EC2 Instances" and "Idle Instances," which can flag candidates for downsizing or stopping. However, these checks deliver only high-level alerts based on broad CloudWatch metric thresholds and do not generate granular, instance-specific rightsizing recommendations with alternative instance types and sizes. Compute Optimizer goes much further by applying machine learning to historical utilization patterns, making it the specialized service for EC2 rightsizing.
- ✓
AWS Compute Optimizer
Why this is correct
AWS Compute Optimizer is the correct choice because it is purpose-built for this exact need: it continuously analyzes EC2 instance utilization data—CPU, memory, networking, and EBS I/O—collected from CloudWatch (with optional managed or custom metrics). Using machine learning models, it generates actionable rightsizing recommendations that identify both cost savings and performance risks, often suggesting specific instance families or sizes (e.g., moving from m5.large to m6i.large). It also provides estimated monthly savings and reasons for each recommendation, which a sysops administrator can directly use to identify and optimize EC2 instances.
- ✗
AWS CloudTrail
Why it's wrong here
AWS CloudTrail is an auditing and governance service that records API activities such as RunInstances, TerminateInstances, or DescribeInstanceStatus for security and compliance purposes. It does not inspect CPU, memory, or network utilization nor does it produce any cost or performance optimization recommendations. Therefore, while CloudTrail can tell you when and by whom instances were created or modified, it cannot help identify EC2 instances that are underutilized or right-sized for cost reduction.
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Written by Johnson Ajibi, MSc IT Security
Senior Network & Security Engineer · founder of Courseiva
This SOA-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 SOA-C02 exam.