Best Practices for Managing AWS Account Expenditure
Question
A department in an organization has a stipulated monthly expenditure limit on their AWS account and is anxious about exceeding it.
How can they allay this concern in the best possible way?
Answers
Explanations
Click on the arrows to vote for the correct answer
A. B. C. D.Correct Answer - D.
AWS Budgets provides a useful feature of setting custom budgets that prompt users when their costs or usage are forecasted to exceed.
The forecast aspect gives a buffer period in advance when alerting the user.
Budgets can be tracked monthly, quarterly, or yearly, and have customizable start and end dates.
Alerts can be sent via email and/or Amazon Simple Notification Service (SNS) topic.
https://aws.amazon.com/aws-cost-management/aws-budgets/Option A is INCORRECT because the regular review will not stop or alert the department if their service bill exceeds their stipulated budget.
https://docs.aws.amazon.com/account-billing/index.htmlOption B is INCORRECT because selecting the Receive Free Tier Usage Alerts checkbox would notify the department each time their service bills go out of the free-tier range only, not when it approaches the limit.
https://aws.amazon.com/about-aws/whats-new/2017/12/aws-free-tier-usage-alerts-automatically-notify-you-when-you-are-forecasted-to-exceed-your-aws-service-usage-limits/Option C is INCORRECT because configuring an alarm in AWS CloudWatch that triggers after exceeding the bill will not meet the requirements of staying within the desired budget.
The alarm triggers when the account billing exceeds the threshold specified.
It triggers only when actual billing exceeds the threshold.
It does not use projections based on the usage so far in the month.
https://docs.aws.amazon.com/AmazonCloudWatch/latest/monitoring/monitor_estimated_charges_with_cloudwatch.htmlThe best possible way to allay the department's concern of exceeding the stipulated monthly expenditure limit on their AWS account is by setting up a budget and creating email alerts using AWS Budgets.
AWS Budgets is a service that enables users to set custom cost and usage budgets for their AWS resources. With AWS Budgets, users can create a budget that tracks their actual expenditure against their set limit and provides email alerts when the limit is reached.
Option A, regularly reviewing the Billing and Cost management dashboard, can be time-consuming and may not provide immediate alerts when the limit is reached. It is a good practice to monitor the dashboard regularly, but it may not be the best solution for a department anxious about exceeding their monthly expenditure limit.
Option B, ticking the Receive Free Tier Usage Alerts checkbox, will only provide alerts for free tier usage and will not help in tracking actual expenditure against the monthly limit.
Option C, creating an alarm in AWS CloudWatch that triggers each time the services bill surpasses the limit, can be an effective solution, but it requires some setup and configuration. AWS Budgets, on the other hand, provides a simpler solution with email alerts and does not require much configuration.
Therefore, option D, creating an email alert based on the budget parameters using AWS Budgets, is the best possible way to allay the department's concern about exceeding the monthly expenditure limit on their AWS account.
