Solutions Architect Cost Optimization & Performance Flashcards
7 cards from real AWS practice questions. Tap to flip, then mark Knew It or Still Learning — missed cards come back until you master them.
Read the first 7 Solutions Architect Cost Optimization & Performance flashcards as text
Which AWS service provides automated cost anomaly detection and alerts when spending deviates from expected patterns?
Answer: AWS Cost Anomaly Detection
AWS Cost Anomaly Detection uses machine learning to continuously monitor spending and alert you when unusual cost patterns are detected.
A company has EC2 instances with consistent baseline usage plus occasional spikes. Which combination is most cost-optimized?
Answer: Reserved Instances for baseline, Spot for spikes
Covering predictable baseline with Reserved Instances and handling spikes with Spot Instances minimizes total cost while maintaining availability.
Which EBS volume type offers the lowest cost and is appropriate for large sequential throughput workloads like MapReduce?
Answer: st1 (Throughput Optimized HDD)
st1 Throughput Optimized HDD is designed for frequently accessed, large sequential workloads like big data and log processing at a lower cost than SSD.
A company needs a relational database for a new application with variable traffic that peaks only on weekends. Which option minimizes costs?
Answer: Aurora Serverless v2
Aurora Serverless v2 scales capacity in fine-grained increments based on actual demand and charges only for capacity consumed, ideal for variable workloads.
What AWS feature allows you to set spending thresholds and receive alerts before costs exceed your budget?
Answer: AWS Budgets alerts
AWS Budgets allows you to set custom cost or usage thresholds and sends alerts via SNS or email when actual or forecasted spending approaches those limits.
Which CloudFront pricing feature allows you to reduce costs by limiting content delivery to specific geographic regions?
Answer: CloudFront Price Classes
CloudFront Price Classes let you restrict edge locations to less expensive geographic regions, reducing per-GB data transfer rates at the cost of potentially higher latency for excluded regions.
An architect wants to improve performance of a global application serving static assets. Which approach also reduces origin data transfer costs?
Answer: Use Amazon CloudFront with S3 as origin
CloudFront caches S3 assets at edge locations worldwide, reducing repeated data transfer from S3 to CloudFront and serving users from nearby edge nodes.