CV0-004 Operations and Support Practice Question
A company uses AWS and wants to optimize costs by receiving recommendations to downsize over-provisioned EC2 instances. Which tool provides rightsizing recommendations?
⚠ Common exam trap
CV0-004 often tests the distinction between cost visibility tools (Cost Explorer, Budgets) and cost optimization recommendation engines (Compute Optimizer, Trusted Advisor), so candidates must remember that only Compute Optimizer provides detailed EC2 rightsizing recommendations based on utilization metrics.
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 service specifically designed to analyze resource utilization metrics (such as CPU, memory, network, and disk) and generate rightsizing recommendations for EC2 instances, Auto Scaling groups, EBS volumes, and Lambda functions. It uses machine learning to identify over-provisioned or under-provisioned resources and provides actionable recommendations to downsize or upsize, directly addressing the goal of cost optimization. Unlike other tools that focus on billing or budgets, Compute Optimizer delivers instance-type-level guidance based on actual usage patterns.
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
Why it's wrong here
AWS Budgets tracks spend against thresholds and raises alerts; it performs no instance metric analysis, so it cannot generate rightsizing recommendations. It is tempting because both features address cost, and it would be correct for monitoring budget overruns or forecasting monthly expenditure.
- ✗
AWS Trusted Advisor
Why it's wrong here
Trusted Advisor surfaces cost-optimisation checks such as low-utilisation EC2 instances, yet its rightsizing guidance is limited to a subset of services and lacks the detailed CPU, memory and network metrics needed to size instances precisely. It is tempting as a broad best-practise dashboard, which suits governance reviews rather than granular downsizing recommendations.
- ✗
AWS Cost Explorer
Why it's wrong here
Cost Explorer reports historical spend and forecasts, but its rightsizing recommendations cover only EC2 instances and rely on CloudWatch metrics; it cannot evaluate the full resource set or identify idle load balancers and underused RDS. It is tempting because it visualises cost trends, which suits budgeting and anomaly detection rather than instance-level sizing advice.
- ✓
AWS Compute Optimizer
Why this is correct
AWS Compute Optimizer analyses CloudWatch metrics against instance families and returns rightsizing recommendations for over-provisioned EC2 instances, directly meeting the cost-optimisation requirement. Cost Explorer and Trusted Advisor do not produce instance-level downsizing guidance of this kind.
Quick reference
Cloud Service Model Comparison
| Model | You Manage | Provider Manages | Examples |
|---|---|---|---|
| IaaS | OS, runtime, apps, data | Hardware, hypervisor, networking | EC2, Azure VMs, GCP Compute Engine |
| PaaS | Apps and data | OS, runtime, middleware, hardware | Elastic Beanstalk, Azure App Service |
| SaaS | Data and settings only | Everything else | Microsoft 365, Salesforce, Workday |
| FaaS / Serverless | Function code only | Infra, scaling, runtime | Lambda, Azure Functions, Cloud Run |
| CaaS | Containers and apps | Kubernetes, OS, hardware | EKS, AKS, GKE |
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JA
Written and reviewed by Johnson Ajibi, MSc IT Security
Senior Network & Security Engineer · founder of Courseiva
Last reviewed September 2026 · checked against the official CompTIA exam blueprint
This CV0-004 practice question is part of Courseiva's free CompTIA 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 CV0-004 exam.