AWS DevOps Cost Optimization 4

Question 1

A team uses AWS Step Functions to orchestrate their deployment workflow with many short-lived state transitions. Which Step Functions pricing model minimizes cost for high-frequency, fast-executing workflows?

Accepted Answer

Express Workflows, which bill per execution duration rather than per state transition

Answer

Express Workflows bill based on the number of executions and their duration, making them far cheaper than Standard Workflows for high-volume, short-duration orchestration tasks.

Question 2

Which approach best reduces API Gateway costs for a webhook endpoint that triggers CodePipeline executions?

Accepted Answer

Switch from REST API to HTTP API in API Gateway

Answer

HTTP APIs in API Gateway cost approximately 71% less than REST APIs and support the same webhook use cases, making them the most cost-effective choice for simple trigger endpoints.

Question 3

A DevOps team wants to reduce costs on their multi-region deployment pipeline that replicates artifacts across 5 regions. Which strategy is most cost-effective?

Accepted Answer

Deploy artifacts on-demand to each region only when a deployment is triggered in that region

Answer

Deploying artifacts to regions only when deployments are triggered avoids paying for pre-replication data transfer and storage in regions that may not be actively used.

Question 4

A team's CodeBuild project pulls a large base Docker image (8GB) on every build. What is the most cost-effective solution to reduce build time and data transfer costs?

Accepted Answer

Build a custom base image with pre-installed dependencies and store it in ECR, then use CodeBuild Docker layer caching

Answer

A pre-built base image stored in ECR combined with Docker layer caching means CodeBuild only pulls changed layers, drastically reducing build duration and intra-region transfer costs.

Question 5

Which AWS Compute Optimizer recommendation is most actionable for reducing EC2 costs in a deployment fleet managed by CodeDeploy?

Accepted Answer

Downsize over-provisioned instances to a smaller instance type that still meets performance requirements

Answer

Compute Optimizer analyzes CloudWatch metrics to identify over-provisioned instances and recommends right-sized instance types that reduce costs while maintaining performance.

AWS Practice Test

AWS Practice Test

AWS DevOps Cost Optimization 4