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SOA-C02 Practice Question: AWS Cost Anomaly Detection for automated alerts…
This SOA-C02 practice question tests your understanding of aws cost anomaly detection for automated alerts…. Match the stated requirement to the specific cloud service, access model, or configuration option — many options are valid in isolation but not for this scenario. A key principle to apply: cost Anomaly Detection. Once you have made your selection, read the full explanation to reinforce the concept and understand why each distractor is designed to mislead on exam day.
The finance team was surprised by a $12,000 spike in EC2 costs last month caused by a runaway Auto Scaling group. They want to receive an email alert within hours whenever any AWS service cost behaves unexpectedly, without manually setting fixed dollar thresholds for each service. Which AWS cost management feature provides this?
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
Enable Cost Anomaly Detection with an AWS services monitor and create an alert subscription to email the finance team when an anomaly is detected
Cost Anomaly Detection's ML model learns the historical spending pattern for each service. When EC2 (or any service) starts spending at an anomalous rate, the model detects it within hours. The alert subscription can notify via email or SNS with the anomaly amount, affected service, and percentage deviation. No manual threshold tuning is needed — the model self-calibrates.
B
Distractor review
Create an AWS Budget with a monthly EC2 cost threshold of $10,000 and an alert at 80 percent of the threshold
A fixed-threshold budget is easy to set up but requires knowing the expected spend in advance. It does not detect anomalous patterns — if normal spend is $9,000 and a runaway group adds $3,000 over the alert period, a $10,000 budget may not trigger if some costs shift to the next period. It also requires separate budgets per service.
C
Distractor review
Enable AWS Cost Explorer and review the daily cost breakdown each morning to spot unexpected charges
Cost Explorer is a visualization and analysis tool — it requires manual review. The finance team would only discover the spike during their daily review, potentially hours or days after it began. Cost Anomaly Detection sends automatic proactive alerts without requiring manual log-in and review.
D
Distractor review
Configure CloudWatch Billing alarms with a static threshold for each AWS service individually
CloudWatch Billing alarms use fixed dollar thresholds per account or service. Setting appropriate static thresholds for every service requires knowing the expected spend and updating thresholds as workloads grow. They do not use ML to distinguish normal growth from anomalous spikes.
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
Treat this as a scenario question. Identify the problem, the constraint, and the best action. Then compare each option against those facts.
KKey Concepts to Remember
- Cost Anomaly Detection
- anomaly monitor
- alert subscription
- ML-based threshold
- AWS Cost Explorer
TExam Day Tips
- 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.
Key takeaway
Cost Anomaly Detection
Related practice questions
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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 company uses Amazon CloudFront to deliver content to a global audience. The origin is an Application Load Balancer in us-east-1. The SysOps administrator wants to reduce costs by minimizing the number of requests that reach the origin server. Which action should the administrator take?
Question 2
A company runs a batch processing application on Amazon EC2 that runs for 2 hours every night. The workload can tolerate interruptions. Which EC2 purchasing option provides the lowest cost for this use case?
Question 3
A SysOps administrator needs to monitor the CPU utilization of an Amazon RDS DB instance and receive an alarm when CPU utilization exceeds 80% for 5 consecutive minutes. Which AWS service should be used to create this alarm?
Question 4
A company runs a critical web application on Amazon EC2 instances in an Auto Scaling group behind an Application Load Balancer (ALB). The application uses session stickiness (sticky sessions) to maintain user sessions. The SysOps administrator notices that when instances are replaced during a scale-in or failure event, users lose their session data. The administrator needs to preserve session data across instance failures without losing stickiness benefits. What should the administrator do?
Question 5
A company runs a production web application on a single Amazon EC2 instance. The application experiences a predictable and steady workload 24/7. The SysOps administrator wants to minimize compute costs for this instance while ensuring it remains available during the expected workload. Which EC2 purchasing option should the administrator use?
Question 6
A company has a VPC with public and private subnets. The private subnets host application servers that need to make outbound HTTPS connections to the internet. The SysOps administrator must implement a solution that provides outbound internet connectivity while preventing inbound connections from the internet. Additionally, the solution must allow the company to control which domains the application servers can access. Which solution should the administrator implement?
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FAQ
Questions learners often ask
What does this SOA-C02 question test?
Cost Anomaly Detection
What is the correct answer to this question?
The correct answer is: Enable Cost Anomaly Detection with an AWS services monitor and create an alert subscription to email the finance team when an anomaly is detected — AWS Cost Anomaly Detection uses machine learning to establish a baseline for each service's spending pattern (accounting for day-of-week trends, seasonal variation, and historical norms). When actual spend deviates significantly from the ML-predicted range, an anomaly is detected and an alert is sent via an SNS-backed subscription. Unlike AWS Budgets, no fixed dollar threshold needs to be configured — the model adapts to the workload's natural cost pattern. Anomalies are typically detected within hours of the unexpected spend beginning.
What should I do if I get this SOA-C02 question wrong?
Review cost Anomaly Detection, then practise related SOA-C02 questions on the same topic to reinforce the concept.
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