Question

Difficulty: MediumConsolidated Billing and AWS Organizations

A manufacturing enterprise uses AWS Organizations to consolidate the billing of its three separate business units, each operating in its own AWS member account. Two of the accounts store large volumes of data in the Amazon S3 Standard storage class. Which of the following describes how AWS determines the storage pricing for this enterprise under consolidated billing?

  1. AWS aggregates the S3 storage usage across all member accounts in the organization, allowing the enterprise to reach lower-priced volume tiers faster.Answer
  2. B
    AWS generates separate monthly invoices for each member account, but uses Service Control Policies (SCPs) to enforce spending limits on S3 storage.
  3. C
    To qualify for volume discounts, a systems administrator must perform monthly billing consolidation tasks using the AWS Account Root User credentials of each member account.
  4. D
    AWS offsets administration costs by transferring physical storage infrastructure maintenance tasks from AWS to the customer's management account under the Shared Responsibility Model.

Answer

AWS aggregates the S3 storage usage across all member accounts in the organization, allowing the enterprise to reach lower-priced volume tiers faster.
The correct option is that AWS aggregates S3 storage usage across all member accounts in the organization. S3 Standard pricing features volume discount tiers where the cost per gigabyte decreases as storage volume increases. By consolidating the usage of all member accounts, the enterprise combines its storage volume, allowing it to reach those lower-priced volume tiers faster and lower its overall S3 costs.

Step-by-Step Solution

1
Analyze how consolidated billing handles multi-account resource usage for pricing.
AWS consolidated billing treats all member accounts in the organization as a single account for the purpose of calculating volume pricing tiers.
This behavior enables organizations with multiple accounts to pool their resource usage and qualify for volume discounts.
2
Evaluate the S3 pricing model under consolidation.
S3 Standard charges decrease per gigabyte as storage volume increases into higher tiers. Aggregating the usage of the two accounts combines their total gigabytes, pushing the organization into cheaper tier rates faster than single, isolated accounts would achieve.
This direct consolidation mechanism lowers the overall cost for the organization compared to paying individual bills.

Key Concept

Consolidated Billing Volume Discounts
Estimated Time:1m 30s
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