Billing, Pricing & Support Models Flashcards

Which AWS pricing model allows you to pay for compute capacity by the hour or second with no long-term commitments?

Answer: On-Demand Instances

On-Demand Instances are an AWS pricing model that allows you to pay for compute capacity by the hour or second, with no long-term commitments or upfront payments. This model provides flexibility to increase or decrease your compute capacity depending on the demands of your application. It's ideal for applications with short-term, irregular workloads that cannot be interrupted.

What tool can help you estimate AWS service costs?

Answer: AWS Pricing Calculator

The AWS Pricing Calculator is a free web-based tool that helps you estimate the cost of your AWS services. You can input your planned usage for various services like EC2, S3, and RDS, and it will provide a detailed breakdown of estimated monthly costs. This tool is invaluable for planning budgets and understanding potential expenditures before deploying resources.

Which AWS support plan provides a full set of Trusted Advisor checks?

Answer: Business

The AWS Business Support plan provides a full set of AWS Trusted Advisor checks, which include recommendations for cost optimization, performance, security, fault tolerance, and service limits. Unlike the Basic and Developer plans, the Business plan offers access to all checks and provides programmatic access to Trusted Advisor via the AWS Support API. This comprehensive guidance helps optimize your AWS environment.

Which AWS support plan includes access to a Technical Account Manager (TAM)?

Answer: Enterprise

The AWS Enterprise Support plan is designed for large-scale, mission-critical workloads and includes access to a dedicated Technical Account Manager (TAM). A TAM provides proactive guidance, best practices, and helps you plan and review your AWS architecture. This personalized support is crucial for complex deployments and ensuring operational excellence.

Which AWS tool can help visualize and manage your AWS spending and usage over time?

Answer: AWS Cost Explorer

AWS Cost Explorer is a tool that allows you to visualize, understand, and manage your AWS spending and usage over time. You can view your costs and usage data in various charts and graphs, analyze trends, and identify areas for optimization. It helps you gain insights into your spending patterns and make informed decisions to control costs.

What is the main benefit of AWS consolidated billing?

Answer: Offers centralized billing and volume discounts

AWS consolidated billing, a feature of AWS Organizations, allows you to receive a single bill for all AWS accounts in your organization. This simplifies billing management and provides volume discounts across all accounts, as usage is combined to qualify for lower pricing tiers. It's a powerful way to reduce costs and streamline financial operations for multiple AWS accounts.

Which AWS service helps you create budgets and sends alerts when you exceed them?

Answer: AWS Budgets

AWS Budgets is a service that allows you to set custom budgets to track your costs and usage. You can create budgets for specific services, tags, or even for your entire account. When your actual or forecasted costs exceed your defined budget thresholds, AWS Budgets sends alerts via email or SNS, helping you stay within your spending limits.

Which pricing model allows users to bid on unused AWS capacity?

Answer: Spot Instances

Spot Instances allow users to bid on unused Amazon EC2 capacity, offering significant cost savings compared to On-Demand Instances. They are ideal for fault-tolerant, flexible applications that can handle interruptions, as AWS can reclaim Spot Instances with a two-minute warning if capacity is needed elsewhere. This pricing model is excellent for batch jobs, data analysis, and other non-critical workloads.

Which AWS support plan is best suited for experimenting and testing?

Answer: Developer

The AWS Developer Support plan is best suited for customers who are experimenting with AWS or performing development and testing. It provides technical support during business hours via email, with a response time of 12-24 hours for general guidance. While it doesn't offer the comprehensive features of Business or Enterprise plans, it's a good option for non-production workloads and learning.