Question

Difficulty: EasyConsolidated Billing and AWS Organizations

A university department manages three separate AWS accounts for different research projects. The administrator wants to combine the payments for these accounts and aggregate their storage volume to qualify for lower pricing tiers on Amazon S3. Which AWS Organizations feature directly supports this requirement?

  1. A
    Service Control Policies (SCPs)
  2. B
    AWS Cost Explorer
  3. Consolidated billingAnswer
  4. D
    Cost allocation tags

Answer

Consolidated billing
Consolidated billing enables organizations to consolidate payment for multiple AWS accounts. By combining accounts under a single paying account, AWS aggregates the usage from all member accounts, allowing them to reach volume pricing tiers (such as S3 storage discounts) faster than they would individually.

Step-by-Step Solution

1
Identify the goal of the administrator, which is to combine payments for multiple AWS accounts and aggregate resource usage to qualify for volume pricing tiers.
The administrator needs a billing feature of AWS Organizations that links accounts and pools their usage.
Understanding the requirement helps isolate the correct organization-level billing feature.
2
Evaluate the available features of AWS Organizations and billing tools against this goal.
Consolidated billing is the specific feature designed to consolidate payments and aggregate usage for volume discounts, whereas other options like SCPs are for permissions, and Cost Explorer or tags are for analysis and tracking.
Comparing features ensures the selected option directly addresses both the unified payment and the volume discount requirement.

Key Concept

Consolidated billing allows organizations to combine payment for multiple member accounts, providing a single bill and aggregating usage to qualify for volume pricing discounts.
Estimated Time:45s
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