AWS Certified Solutions Architect – Associate (SAA-C03) — Question 887

A company has an internal application that runs on Amazon EC2 instances in an Auto Scaling group. The EC2 instances are compute optimized and use Amazon Elastic Block Store (Amazon EBS) volumes.

The company wants to identify cost optimizations across the EC2 instances, the Auto Scaling group, and the EBS volumes.

Which solution will meet these requirements with the MOST operational efficiency?

Answer options

• A. Create a new AWS Cost and Usage Report. Search the report for cost recommendations for the EC2 instances the Auto Scaling group, and the EBS volumes.
• B. Create new Amazon CloudWatch billing alerts. Check the alert statuses for cost recommendations for the EC2 instances, the Auto Scaling group, and the EBS volumes.
• C. Configure AWS Compute Optimizer for cost recommendations for the EC2 instances, the Auto Scaling group and the EBS volumes.
• D. Configure AWS Compute Optimizer for cost recommendations for the EC2 instances. Create a new AWS Cost and Usage Report. Search the report for cost recommendations for the Auto Scaling group and the EBS volumes.

Correct answer: C

Explanation

AWS Compute Optimizer natively analyzes and provides configuration recommendations for Amazon EC2 instances, Auto Scaling groups, and EBS volumes, offering the most operationally efficient way to identify savings. AWS Cost and Usage Reports track historical costs but do not automatically generate resource-sizing recommendations. CloudWatch billing alerts are designed to notify users when spend exceeds defined thresholds, rather than offering optimization guidance.