Question

Difficulty: MediumCost-Optimized Compute Selection and Purchasing Strategies

A retail analytics company has deployed an application environment on AWS. The environment consists of the following components:

* A set of legacy data ingestion scripts that run continuously (24/7) on Amazon EC2 instances with stable CPU usage.
* A fleet of EC2 instances running a web application that experiences highly unpredictable traffic peaks throughout the day.
* A PostgreSQL database hosted on Amazon RDS that stores transactional data and operates around the clock.

The company wants to optimize compute costs for this environment with minimal administrative effort. Which purchasing strategy will meet these requirements most cost-effectively?

  1. Purchase a Compute Savings Plan to cover the EC2 instances, and purchase Amazon RDS Reserved DB Instances for the PostgreSQL database.Answer
  2. B
    Purchase a single Compute Savings Plan with a commitment level high enough to cover both the EC2 instances and the Amazon RDS PostgreSQL database.
  3. C
    Migrate the continuous 24/7 data ingestion scripts from EC2 to AWS Lambda to eliminate idle compute costs, and use On-Demand EC2 instances for the web application.
  4. D
    Migrate the PostgreSQL database to Amazon DynamoDB configured with Provisioned Capacity Mode to handle the unpredictable transaction peaks, and purchase EC2 Reserved Instances.

Answer

Purchase a Compute Savings Plan to cover the EC2 instances, and purchase Amazon RDS Reserved DB Instances for the PostgreSQL database.
Purchasing a Compute Savings Plan is the most effective way to cover the EC2 instances since it applies automatically to any instance family, size, or region, accommodating both the stable data ingestion instances and the unpredictable web application instances. Because Amazon RDS is not covered under Compute Savings Plans, purchasing Amazon RDS Reserved DB Instances is the correct and most cost-effective way to reduce the PostgreSQL database's 24/7 running costs.

Step-by-Step Solution

1
Analyze compute requirements for EC2 instances.
The EC2 instances include both stable 24/7 workloads and unpredictable spiky web workloads. A Compute Savings Plan is the most flexible choice as it automatically applies discounts to EC2 instance usage regardless of instance family, size, or region.
To ensure maximum flexibility and automated cost savings across diverse and variable EC2 workloads with minimal administrative overhead.
2
Evaluate the database tier cost optimization options.
The PostgreSQL database on Amazon RDS runs continuously 24/7. Compute Savings Plans do not cover Amazon RDS. Instead, RDS Reserved DB Instances must be purchased to reduce database compute costs.
RDS workloads require database-specific reservation plans since general compute savings plans do not apply to database engines.
3
Combine the optimized compute and database purchasing strategies.
A combination of Compute Savings Plans for EC2 and Reserved DB Instances for RDS yields the lowest total cost of ownership while keeping administrative effort low.
This aligns the correct discount vehicle with each resource type according to their respective scopes and billing rules.

Key Concept

Compute Savings Plans vs. Database Reservations
Estimated Time:1m 30s
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