AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner (CLF-C02) — Question 571

A company is moving its development and test environments to AWS to increase agility and reduce cost. Because these are not production workloads and the servers are not fully utilized, occasional unavailability is acceptable.

What is the MOST cost-effective Amazon EC2 pricing model that will meet these requirements?

Answer options

• A. Reserved Instances
• B. On-Demand Instances
• C. Spot Instances
• D. Dedicated Hosts

Correct answer: C

Explanation

Spot Instances leverage spare EC2 capacity at steep discounts of up to 90%, making them ideal for non-production environments that can handle occasional interruptions. On-Demand and Reserved Instances provide guaranteed availability but at a higher cost, which is unnecessary for this flexible workload. Dedicated Hosts are the most expensive option and are typically used for specific compliance or licensing requirements rather than cost-saving.