Question

Difficulty: EasyAWS Billing and Cost Management Tools

A logistics company wants to track its current AWS spending. The company needs to set up alerts to notify the team when monthly costs exceed a predefined threshold, and they also want to view graphs of their service costs over the past three months to identify spending trends.

Which of the following AWS Billing and Cost Management tools should the company use to meet these requirements? (Select TWO.)

  1. AWS BudgetsAnswer
  2. AWS Cost ExplorerAnswer
  3. C
    AWS Pricing Calculator
  4. D
    AWS Billing Conductor

Answer

AWS Budgets and AWS Cost Explorer are the correct tools.
AWS Budgets is designed to create alerts when cost or usage metrics exceed a user-defined threshold, helping control cloud spend proactively. AWS Cost Explorer provides the visualization tools needed to examine historical usage patterns and trends over the preceding months.

Step-by-Step Solution

1
Identify the need for proactive threshold-based notifications.
The company needs a tool to set up alerts when spending exceeds thresholds. This is a core feature of AWS Budgets.
AWS Budgets is specifically designed for proactive cost tracking and automated notifications based on threshold parameters.
2
Identify the need to visualize historical costs and identify trends over the past three months.
The company needs to view service cost graphs over the past three months. This matches the capabilities of AWS Cost Explorer.
AWS Cost Explorer provides highly interactive charts and forecasting based on historical cost and usage records.
3
Evaluate the incorrect options to confirm the final selection.
AWS Pricing Calculator is incorrect because it is used for pre-deployment estimates. AWS Billing Conductor is incorrect because it is designed for custom billing configurations, not standard spend visualization and alerting.
By process of elimination, AWS Budgets and AWS Cost Explorer are the two correct and complementary tools required for the scenario.

Key Concept

Identifying correct AWS Billing and Cost Management tools based on proactive budgeting and reactive visualization needs
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