As we delve into the fundamentals for the AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner CLF-C02 exam, it is important to understand various aspects of AWS financial management tools. They include AWS Budgets, AWS Cost Explorer, and AWS Billing Conductor. These tools are valuable for managing costs, tracking usage, and optimizing resources within AWS.
1. AWS Budgets
AWS Budgets offers a set of tools to enable you to manage your costs and keep within your desired budget. This is done by setting custom cost and usage budgets to track your AWS resources and get alerts when the usage or cost exceeds the stipulated amount.
Key Capabilities:
- Set custom cost and usage budgets either for the overall AWS cost or for specific services
- Receive email notifications when the costs or usage exceed the budget
- View AWS usage and cost trends, forecasted costs, and comprehensive cost breakdowns
AWS Budgets is beneficial for cloud cost governance, budget tracking, and cost anomaly detection, making it one of the vital tools for managing AWS costs.
Example: Suppose you have a monthly budget of $500 for your AWS services. You can set this amount in AWS Budgets, and it will alert you when your usage is nearing or has exceeded this amount.
2. AWS Cost Explorer
The AWS Cost Explorer is a user interface that provides detailed visibility into your AWS costs and usage.
Key Capabilities:
- Explore and analyze your AWS costs and usage over time through a detailed and customizable graphical interface.
- View data for up to 13 months of historical AWS usage and costs, and forecast how much you’re likely to spend for the next three months.
- Identify trends, pinpoint cost drivers, and detect anomalies.
For example, you can use the AWS Cost Explorer to see your spending pattern for Amazon EC2 instances over the past month, which can help you identify potential areas for cost savings.
3. AWS Billing Conductor
AWS Billing Conductor is a custom report builder and processor for AWS Cost and Usage reports (CURs). It simplifies the process of analyzing and reconciling billing data.
Key Capabilities:
- Helps to bind CURs to the AWS Glue Data Catalog and create a custom Athena view for queries.
- Enhances CURs with resource-level tags, enabling cost allocation reporting
- Can process CURs with resource IDs for AWS services that support this feature.
For example, an organization can use AWS Billing Conductor to put together a detailed cost report by department, using AWS tags to associate resources with particular departments.
In summary, the appropriate use of AWS Budgets, AWS Cost Explorer, and AWS Billing Conductor can make your cost management and optimization processes more efficient. AWS Budgets can help you stay within your financial limits, AWS Cost Explorer can help you understand your costs deeper, and AWS Billing Conductor can help in detailed cost allocation and reconciliation. Understanding these services is an important aspect of any cloud practitioner’s journey to AWS financial management proficiency.
Practice Test
True/False: AWS Cost Explorer comes as an additional cost for AWS Basic Support customers.
- True
- False
Answer: False
Explanation: AWS Cost Explorer is a free tool that AWS offers to both Basic and Enterprise supports.
Which AWS tool allows you to analyze your cost and usage patterns?
- A. AWS Billing Conductor
- B. AWS Budgets
- C. AWS Cost Explorer
- D. None of the above
Answer: C. AWS Cost Explorer
Explanation: AWS Cost Explorer provides insights into AWS spending. It helps in analyzing cost and usage patterns.
True/False: AWS Budgets cannot send alerts when your usage or costs exceed predefined limits.
- True
- False
Answer: False
Explanation: AWS Budgets can send alerts or notifications when the cost or usage exceeds the pre-defined budget.
What is the main function of AWS Billing Conductor?
- A. It provides detailed cost and usage data
- B. It sends notifications for exceeding cost limits
- C. It creates customizable billing and cost management experiences
- D. It automatically shuts down underutilized resources
Answer: C. It creates customizable billing and cost management experiences
Explanation: AWS Billing Conductor is a solution that enables AWS partners to manage the billing and cost transparency needs of their customers.
Can you set custom budgets for your AWS resources using AWS Budgets?
- A. Yes
- B. No
Answer: A. Yes
Explanation: Yes, AWS Budgets allows you to set custom cost and usage budgets that alert you when your usage or costs exceed the thresholds you’ve established.
True/False: AWS Cost Explorer provides API access to get AWS cost and usage data.
- True
- False
Answer: True
Explanation: AWS Cost Explorer does provide API (Application Programming Interface) access allowing users to interact with their AWS cost and usage data programmatically.
What is NOT a feature of AWS Cost Explorer?
- A. Daily and Monthly cost and usage data
- B. Customizable views
- C. Forecast cost up to 12 months
- D. Automatic resource shutdown
Answer: D. Automatic resource shutdown
Explanation: While AWS Cost Explorer provides cost and usage data, customizable views, and forecasting, it does not have the ability to automatically shutdown resources.
AWS Budgets provides which capabilities?
- A. Set custom cost and usage budgets
- B. Get alerts via SNS when usage exceeds the budget
- C. Analyze the data of past years to set future budgets
- D. All of the above
Answer: D. All of the above
Explanation: AWS Budgets offers all these capabilities to monitor AWS cost and usage.
True/False: AWS Billing Conductor is a free service offered by AWS.
- True
- False
Answer: True
Explanation: AWS Billing Conductor is a solution provided free of charge, but usual charges for AWS services apply.
Where can you manage your AWS Budgets?
- A. AWS Management Console
- B. AWS Cost Explorer
- C. AWS CLI
- D. All of the above
Answer: D. All of the above
Explanation: AWS Budgets can be managed from AWS Management Console, AWS Cost Explorer, and AWS CLI.
Interview Questions
What is the primary use of AWS Budgets?
AWS Budgets give you the ability to set custom cost and usage budgets that alert you when your costs or usage exceed (or are forecasted to exceed) the budgeted amount.
What are the capabilities of AWS Cost Explorer?
AWS Cost Explorer is a tool that enables users to visualize, understand, and manage their costs and usage over time. This service provides data for charts that provide insights about costs for AWS resources.
What does AWS Cost Explorer allow its users to do?
AWS Cost Explorer allows its users to filter views by varying dimensions like Service or Linked Account, create custom cost and usage reports, and predict future spend patterns.
Briefly describe AWS Billing Conductor.
AWS Billing Conductor is a solution that enables customers to create customized billing rules and easily distribute costs across complex organizations.
How does AWS Budgets help to control the cost of AWS services?
AWS Budgets allows customers to set custom cost alerts, helping to manage expenses. When the defined threshold is reached, AWS Budgets will send email notifications to prevent unexpected charges.
Can AWS Cost Explorer help predict future costs?
Yes, AWS Cost Explorer has forecasting features that allow users to predict future costs based on historical data.
How can an organization use AWS Budgets to manage its AWS bills?
AWS Budgets can set custom overhead budgets across AWS services and send alerts to manage costs effectively. Budgets can be set up for costs, usage, RI utilization, or RI coverage.
Does AWS Billing Conductor provide cost allocation tags?
Yes, AWS Billing Conductor enables customers to apply user-defined cost allocation tags to their AWS resources for customized billing reports.
Can usage budgets in AWS Budgets be set up to monitor service usage?
Yes, users can set up usage budgets in AWS Budgets to track things like the number of hours instances are running in a month or the number of gigabytes of storage used.
Do you need to activate AWS Cost Explorer in order to use it?
Yes, AWS Cost Explorer is not automatically activated when you open an AWS account. You need to activate AWS Cost Explorer in the Billing and Cost Management console.
In AWS Cost Explorer, what is the “Daily unblended costs” report used for?
The “Daily unblended costs” report in AWS Cost Explorer shows the cost for each service without any discounts like savings plans or reserved instances factored in.
Why is “Monthly costs by linked account” report useful in the AWS Cost Explorer?
The “Monthly costs by linked account” report is useful for organizations with multiple AWS accounts under a single payee, as it provides a breakdown of costs by each linked account.
Can AWS Budgets be configured to alert different stakeholders at different threshold levels?
Yes, AWS Budgets allows multiple custom alerts at different cost thresholds to notify different stakeholders.
What does AWS Billing Conductor provide to customers?
AWS Billing Conductor provides customers with a solution that can create customized billing rules to distribute costs across complex organizations, classify resources, and generate tailored invoice events.
What are the main benefits of using AWS Budgets?
The main benefits of using AWS Budgets are cost control and planning, as it helps users plan service usage, create budgets, track AWS costs, and set alert notifications for when the expenditure exceeds or is close to exceeding the set budget.
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