AWS Certified Solutions Architect – Associate (SAA-C03) — Question 28

A company observes an increase in Amazon EC2 costs in its most recent bill. The billing team notices unwanted vertical scaling of instance types for a couple of EC2 instances. A solutions architect needs to create a graph comparing the last 2 months of EC2 costs and perform an in-depth analysis to identify the root cause of the vertical scaling.
How should the solutions architect generate the information with the LEAST operational overhead?

Answer options

• A. Use AWS Budgets to create a budget report and compare EC2 costs based on instance types.
• B. Use Cost Explorer's granular filtering feature to perform an in-depth analysis of EC2 costs based on instance types.
• C. Use graphs from the AWS Billing and Cost Management dashboard to compare EC2 costs based on instance types for the last 2 months.
• D. Use AWS Cost and Usage Reports to create a report and send it to an Amazon S3 bucket. Use Amazon QuickSight with Amazon S3 as a source to generate an interactive graph based on instance types.

Correct answer: B

Explanation

The correct answer is B because Cost Explorer's granular filtering feature allows for detailed analysis of EC2 costs by instance types with minimal operational effort. While options A and C provide some insights, they do not offer the same depth of analysis as Cost Explorer. Option D involves more complex processes and additional tools, which increases operational overhead.