Effective cost management is one of the key components of any successful architecture strategy. It enables organizations to run their application workloads with tight control over their cost and budget. In particular, Amazon Web Services (AWS) offers several tools for managing costs, which are relevant for candidates studying for the AWS Certified Solutions Architect – Associate (SAA-C03) exam. In this article, we will explore three main tools: AWS Cost Explorer, AWS Budgets, and AWS Cost and Usage Report (CUR), with their suitable use cases.
1. AWS Cost Explorer:
AWS Cost Explorer is a user-friendly interface that allows you to visualize, understand, and manage your AWS costs and usage over time. This service provides pre-configured views that highlight cost trends. It is designed to let you dive deeper using granular tools to extract detailed information.
Use Case:
Let’s say you want to identify which AWS service you are spending the most, or how your costs changed over a specific period, AWS Cost Explorer is your tool. You can apply filters on the data by services, accounts, tags, and more, to understand the driving factors of your costs without the need for a detailed analysis.
2. AWS Budgets:
AWS Budgets provides the ability to set custom cost and usage budgets that alert you when the thresholds you’ve defined are exceeded. These alerts can be sent via email or published through Amazon Simple Notification Service (SNS).
Use Case:
Suppose you are a startup running on a tight budget and want to keep a tab on your monthly AWS spend. In this instance, you can set up a budget in AWS Budgets to monitor your costs and usage. AWS will send notifications when your usage or costs exceed the budget amount you set up. This prevents any unexpected expenditure and helps better manage your AWS costs.
3. AWS Cost and Usage Report (CUR):
The AWS Cost and Usage Report (CUR) provides comprehensive data about your costs. These can be further segmented by hourly, daily, or monthly granularity, and involve data related to product, pricing, and reservation.
Use Case:
Imagine you are a large organization with multiple departments and require an intricate breakdown of costs per department so you can track and allocate resources efficiently. AWS Cost and Usage Report, with its in-depth insights and granularity, is a suitable option. You can ingest this data into Amazon Athena or Redshift for further analysis.
To summarize
Choosing an appropriate cost management tool largely depends on your business requirement. The table below provides a comparison of these tools:
| AWS Cost Management Tools | Granularity | Alerting Feature | Detailed Reporting |
|---|---|---|---|
| AWS Cost Explorer | Daily | No | No |
| AWS Cost and Usage report | Up to hourly | No | Yes |
| AWS Budgets | Daily | Yes | No |
While AWS Cost Explorer provides basic cost tracking with visualization, AWS Budgets helps in setting cost and usage thresholds with alerts. On the other hand, the AWS Cost and Usage Report is beneficial for detailed cost reporting and analysis. It is advised to apply these tools according to your specific cost tracking and managing needs. These services are crucial for effective cost management, which will be an important part of your tasks if you are preparing for the AWS Certified Solutions Architect – Associate exam.
Remember, understanding your usage and cost patterns is the first step towards optimizing your AWS costs. Always ensure you leverage AWS Cost Management tools to get visibility, accountability, and control over your cloud costs.
Practice Test
True/False: AWS Cost Explorer is a service that allows you to visualize, understand, and manage your AWS costs and usage over a specified time period.
- True
- False
Answer: True.
Explanation: AWS Cost Explorer is a user interface that lets you visualize, understand, and manage your AWS costs and usage over a specified time period.
Single Select: Which service from AWS helps you to plan, track, and manage your AWS costs?
- a) AWS Cost and Usage Report
- b) AWS Budgets
- c) AWS Cost Explorer
- d) All of the Above
Answer: d) All of the Above
Explanation: All these services can help in monitoring AWS costs. The Cost and Usage report provides the detailed data you need. AWS Budgets allows you to set custom AWS cost and usage budgets. AWS Cost Explorer has an easy interface that lets users visualize, understand, and manage AWS costs.
True/False: AWS Cost Explorer does not allow you to forecast your future spending.
- True
- False
Answer: False
Explanation: AWS Cost Explorer includes a default view that shows the forecasted costs for the next 12 months based on your historical cost data.
Single Select: Which AWS tool can automatically send you alerts when your usage or costs surpass the budget amount that you set?
- a) AWS Cost and Usage Report
- b) AWS Budgets
- c) AWS Cost Explorer
- d) None of the above
Answer: b) AWS Budgets
Explanation: AWS Budgets can send you email alerts when you cross your budgeted thresholds.
Multiple Select: Which of the following AWS cost management tools can help you with reservations usage and coverage?
- a) AWS Cost and Usage Report
- b) AWS Budgets
- c) AWS Cost Explorer
- d) None of the above
Answer: a) AWS Cost and Usage Report, c) AWS Cost Explorer
Explanation: Both AWS Cost and Usage Report and AWS Cost Explorer provide information about your Reserved Instances usage and coverage.
True/False: AWS Cost Explorer allows you to create custom, detailed billing reports.
- True
- False
Answer: False
Explanation: The AWS Cost and Usage Report is specifically designed to provide comprehensive data about costs, allowing users to create custom, detailed billing reports.
Single Select: Which AWS tool would you use to get comprehensive data about costs that support custom, detailed billing reports?
- a) AWS Budgets
- b) AWS Cost Explorer
- c) AWS Cost and Usage Report
- d) None of the above
Answer: c) AWS Cost and Usage Report
Explanation: AWS Cost and Usage Report gives detailed reports about costs and supports creating custom billing reports.
True/False: With AWS Budgets, you can create daily, monthly, and annual budgets for your AWS costs.
- True
- False
Answer: True
Explanation: AWS Budgets allows creating daily, monthly, and annual budgets for AWS costs.
Single Select: Which service allows you to see the forecasted costs for the next three months based on your historical costs?
- a) AWS Budgets
- b) AWS Cost Explorer
- c) AWS Cost and Usage Report
- d) None of the above
Answer: b) AWS Cost Explorer
Explanation: AWS Cost Explorer includes a default view that presents a forecast of costs for the next 3 months.
True/False: AWS Cost and Usage Report provides only CSV output.
- True
- False
Answer: True
Explanation: AWS Cost and Usage Report outputs in a CSV file format, allowing it to be easily integrated into various data processes and systems.
Interview Questions
What is the primary function of AWS Cost Explorer?
AWS Cost Explorer is a tool that enables users to view and analyze their expenses and usage over time. With AWS Cost Explorer, users can visualize, understand, and manage their AWS costs and usage over time.
Name one use case for the AWS cost and usage report?
A common use case for AWS Cost and Usage Report is to gather comprehensive cost and usage data, which can be further analyzed in other AWS tools or in an external data warehouse to get even more detailed insights about the costs.
What is the purpose of AWS Budgets in AWS cost management?
AWS Budgets gives users the ability to set custom cost and usage budgets that alert when the budget thresholds are exceeded. It helps to manage spending by alerting users to potential cost overruns.
How can the AWS Cost and Usage Report help manage AWS costs?
The AWS Cost and Usage Report contains comprehensive cost and usage data. With this data, users can identify trends, pinpoint cost drivers, and detect anomalies, which helps in managing overall AWS costs efficiently.
Can AWS Budgets forecast future expenses?
Yes, AWS Budgets can forecast the projected costs for your AWS services for up to the next three months based on historical cost data.
When can AWS Cost Explorer data become available for analysis?
Cost Explorer data is available for analysis approximately 24 hours after the charges are incurred.
How does AWS Budgets alert users when their defined budget thresholds are exceeded?
AWS Budgets uses AWS SNS (Simple Notification Service) to send email notifications when your actual or forecasted cost or usage exceeds your budget threshold.
Can the AWS Cost and Usage Report provide insights into Reserved Instance usage?
Yes, the AWS Cost and Usage Report can provide information on your Reserved Instances, including usage, remaining time, size flexibility, and cost distribution.
What functionality does the AWS Cost Explorer API provide?
The AWS Cost Explorer API allows users to directly access Cost Explorer data, enabling them to build their own cost management applications and support decision-making automation.
Can AWS Budgets help with managing spending per department in a company?
Yes, AWS Budgets can create cost allocation tags that allow users to attribute costs to a department, project, or other facets of the business. This makes it useful for controlling costs by project or department.
What are some of the standard recommendations generated by AWS Cost Explorer’s Rightsizing Recommendations feature?
Rightsizing recommendations can suggest modifications like changing instance families, modifying the instance size, or moving to a different pricing model, all of which are based on historical usage data.
In what format does AWS Cost and Usage Report deliver reports?
AWS Cost and Usage Report delivers the report in CSV format and allows the user to send the report to an S3 bucket for storage.
Can AWS Cost Explorer help identify underutilized resources?
Yes, AWS Cost Explorer includes Rightsizing Recommendations that can help identify underutilized resources and suggest ways to save costs, based on past usage.
Can AWS Budgets track usage of specific AWS services?
Yes, AWS Budgets allows users to set cost budget and usage budgets for specific AWS services.
How often are AWS Cost and Usage Reports updated?
AWS Cost and Usage reports can be updated up to three times a day.
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