Question

Difficulty: HardConsolidated Billing and AWS Organizations

A digital services startup wants to consolidate its billing and governance across multiple business units. The startup decides to bring several standalone AWS accounts under a single AWS Organization using consolidated billing. The IT security team wants to define permission boundaries for these accounts, while the finance team wants to ensure they benefit from bulk resource consumption.

Which two of the following statements correctly describe the behavior or features of AWS Organizations and consolidated billing in this scenario? (Select TWO)

  1. The resource usage across all member accounts is aggregated to calculate volume pricing discounts for services like Amazon S3, lowering the overall cost for the organization.Answer
  2. Service Control Policies (SCPs) can be applied to Organizational Units (OUs) to restrict the maximum permissions for member accounts, but they do not grant permissions.Answer
  3. C
    The management account is automatically granted full administrative permissions to access and manage the resources inside all member accounts by default.
  4. D
    Consolidated billing shifts the financial classification of all cloud resources in the member accounts from operating expenses (OpEx) to capital expenses (CapEx).
  5. E
    AWS is responsible for managing and configuring the identity policies and resource permissions inside the newly added member accounts to meet security standards.

Answer

The correct statements are that resource usage is aggregated across accounts for volume discounts, and that Service Control Policies (SCPs) act as permission boundaries rather than granting permissions.
AWS Organizations consolidated billing aggregates resource usage across all member accounts to qualify for tiered volume discounts (such as S3 storage pricing tiers). Additionally, Service Control Policies (SCPs) act as permission boundaries (guardrails) for the organization or OUs, specifying the maximum allowed permissions without granting any access directly.

Step-by-Step Solution

1
Analyze the pricing benefits of consolidated billing.
AWS combines the usage from all member accounts in the Organization to calculate volume tier discounts (e.g., for Amazon S3), reducing costs.
Consolidated billing treats all accounts within the organization as a single account for volume pricing calculation purposes.
2
Evaluate the behavior of Service Control Policies (SCPs).
SCPs act as maximum permission boundaries (guardrails) at the OU or account level but do not grant any permissions.
SCPs restrict what actions can be performed but do not replace IAM policies, which must still be used to grant permission to users or roles.

Key Concept

Benefits and governance mechanisms of AWS Organizations and consolidated billing, including aggregated volume discounts and the function of Service Control Policies (SCPs).
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