AWS Cloud Practitioner: Billing, Pricing and Support

18 questions with the correct answer and an explanation for each. Topic: Billing, Pricing and Support. Free, no account needed.

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1. A company purchases a Reserved Instance for a three-year term. Which of the following is accurate about what that purchase commits the company to?

  1. It locks in one specific running EC2 instance for the full term
  2. It commits to the instance type and Region rather than one specific running instance, and some attributes can change within that commitment
  3. It commits to the Availability Zone the instance first launched in
  4. It commits to the AMI used at purchase time and cannot be modified

Answer: B — It commits to the instance type and Region rather than one specific running instance, and some attributes can change within that commitment

A Reserved Instance commitment is to a configuration (type and Region), not to one specific running instance, and some attributes can change within that commitment.

2. Within an AWS Organization using consolidated billing, one member account purchases a Reserved Instance. A different member account runs matching On-Demand instances. What happens to that second account's bill?

  1. It is unaffected because Reserved Instance discounts never leave the purchasing account
  2. It can benefit from the discount because usage is combined across accounts before applying discounts
  3. It receives the discount only after transferring the instances into the purchasing account
  4. It must submit a support request to share the discount

Answer: B — It can benefit from the discount because usage is combined across accounts before applying discounts

Consolidated billing combines usage across accounts in the organization before applying discounts, so an RI bought in one account can lower another account's bill.

3. A company transfers a large volume of data from its on-premises servers into AWS over the internet. How is this data transfer typically billed?

  1. Generally free
  2. Billed at the same rate as data leaving AWS
  3. Free only if the data stays within one Availability Zone
  4. Billed per GB regardless of direction

Answer: A — Generally free

Traffic moving into AWS is generally free, unlike traffic leaving AWS.

4. An application running in one AWS Region continuously replicates data to a standby application in another AWS Region. How is that data transfer typically billed?

  1. It is free, since both Regions belong to the same AWS account
  2. It is charged
  3. It is free as long as private IP addresses are used
  4. It is charged only if the destination Region is in a different country

Answer: B — It is charged

Data transfer between AWS Regions is charged, regardless of account or IP addressing.

5. Two EC2 instances in the same Availability Zone communicate with each other using private IP addresses. What does this data transfer typically cost?

  1. It is generally free
  2. It is charged at the same rate as internet-bound traffic
  3. It is charged, because traffic that crosses an Availability Zone boundary is charged
  4. It is generally free only if the instances are in different Availability Zones

Answer: A — It is generally free

Transfer within an Availability Zone over private IP addresses is generally free; charges start when traffic crosses a boundary such as an Availability Zone or a Region.

6. A company needs to archive compliance records that will almost never be accessed, and wants to minimize the cost of storing them for years. Which trade-off should they expect when choosing the cheapest storage tier?

  1. Lower storage cost paired with higher retrieval cost and longer minimum duration
  2. Lower storage cost with no retrieval fee and no minimum duration
  3. Higher storage cost paired with faster, cheaper retrieval
  4. The same retrieval cost regardless of which storage tier is chosen

Answer: A — Lower storage cost paired with higher retrieval cost and longer minimum duration

The cheapest storage tiers trade lower storage cost for higher retrieval cost and longer minimum storage durations.

7. A startup is designing a new multi-service workload and wants to estimate what it will cost at standard on-demand rates before creating any resources.

  1. AWS Cost Explorer
  2. AWS Budgets
  3. AWS Pricing Calculator
  4. AWS Cost and Usage Reports

Answer: C — AWS Pricing Calculator

Estimating cost for a planned, not-yet-built workload at On-Demand rates is exactly what the Pricing Calculator is for.

8. A team wants to be notified automatically as soon as their monthly AWS spending crosses 80% of a limit they define themselves.

  1. AWS Cost Explorer
  2. AWS Cost Anomaly Detection
  3. AWS Pricing Calculator
  4. AWS Budgets

Answer: D — AWS Budgets

Alerting when spending crosses a threshold you set is the defining, forward-looking job of Budgets, distinct from Anomaly Detection which flags unusual spend automatically rather than a user-defined limit.

9. A finance team wants to visually filter and group last quarter's AWS costs to identify which specific service drove the increase.

  1. AWS Budgets
  2. AWS Cost Explorer
  3. AWS Cost and Usage Reports
  4. AWS Cost Optimization Hub

Answer: B — AWS Cost Explorer

Analysing past cost and usage with visuals, filtering and grouping to explain what already happened is Cost Explorer's role.

10. A company wants to see exactly how much each of its internal departments spent on AWS last month.

  1. Cost categories
  2. Cost allocation tags
  3. Consolidated billing
  4. Cost Anomaly Detection

Answer: B — Cost allocation tags

Cost allocation tags are resource tags activated for billing so cost can be broken down by team, project or environment, which is the direct answer to a which-department-spent-what question.

11. An organization's management account pays the charges of several member accounts under consolidated billing. Apart from receiving a single bill, what financial advantage does this arrangement give the organization?

  1. Each member account is charged a lower flat monthly fee for belonging to the organization
  2. Volume pricing discounts, Reserved Instance discounts and Savings Plans are shared across the accounts' combined usage
  3. Every member account gets its own independent Reserved Instance pricing regardless of other accounts' usage
  4. Each member account receives its own authoritative invoice and pays AWS directly

Answer: B — Volume pricing discounts, Reserved Instance discounts and Savings Plans are shared across the accounts' combined usage

Usage is combined across all accounts, which shares volume, Reserved Instance and Savings Plans discounts and can cost less than the same accounts standing alone. Member account bills are informational only, so D is wrong, and consolidated billing carries no extra fee rather than a per-account fee.

12. A member account leaves the AWS Organization it belonged to. What happens to the Cost Explorer data that was generated while it was still a member?

  1. The data is permanently deleted
  2. The leaving account keeps full access to that data indefinitely
  3. The management account retains the data, and the leaving account loses access unless it rejoins
  4. The data transfers to the leaving account's new standalone billing dashboard

Answer: C — The management account retains the data, and the leaving account loses access unless it rejoins

The data isn't deleted; the management account keeps it, and the departed account only regains access if it rejoins the organization.

13. An engineer at a company that has not purchased any paid AWS support plan wants help debugging why their application code keeps throwing errors. What can AWS provide them through the free support tier?

  1. Full 24x7 technical support from Cloud Support Engineers on how to build their application
  2. One-on-one responses to account and billing questions
  3. A designated Technical Account Manager to advise on the issue
  4. Unlimited support cases opened by any user in the account

Answer: B — One-on-one responses to account and billing questions

The free plan gives 24x7 one-on-one responses to account and billing questions only; technical guidance on how to build things requires a paid plan.

14. A company's support plan guarantees a response within 15 minutes when a business or mission-critical system is completely down, and includes a single designated Technical Account Manager but not a Domain Specialist Engineer. Which support plan do they have?

  1. Business Support+
  2. Enterprise Support
  3. Unified Operations
  4. Basic Support

Answer: B — Enterprise Support

Enterprise Support guarantees under 15 minutes for a business/mission-critical case and includes a designated TAM; Business Support+ has no TAM and a 30-minute guarantee, Unified Operations adds a Domain Specialist Engineer and a 5-minute guarantee, and Basic carries no response-time guarantee at all.

15. A company wants a support plan that provides AWS Security Incident Response at no extra charge, along with strategic business reviews and AWS Countdown event management for major launches. Which plan should they choose?

  1. Business Support+
  2. Enterprise Support
  3. Developer Support
  4. Basic Support

Answer: B — Enterprise Support

AWS Security Incident Response, strategic business reviews, and Countdown event management are called out as additions on top of Enterprise Support.

16. A cost-optimization team wants a tool that scans their AWS account configuration and flags underutilized EC2 instances and overly permissive security groups. Which service should they use?

  1. AWS Trusted Advisor
  2. AWS Health Dashboard
  3. AWS Health API
  4. AWS Support Center

Answer: A — AWS Trusted Advisor

Trusted Advisor inspects account configuration and recommends improvements across cost optimization, performance, security, fault tolerance and service limits, unlike Health Dashboard which reports on AWS's own status.

17. A company detects that an EC2 instance belonging to a different AWS customer is being used to run port scans against their network. Who should they report this abuse to?

  1. AWS Trust and Safety
  2. AWS Support Center
  3. AWS re:Post
  4. AWS Health Dashboard

Answer: A — AWS Trust and Safety

Reports of abuse originating from AWS resources, such as an attack from someone else's EC2 instance, go to AWS Trust and Safety rather than through Support.

18. A company wants to purchase a ready-made third-party monitoring application that runs on AWS, with the charges appearing on their consolidated AWS bill and entitlement handled automatically. Where should they go?

  1. AWS Marketplace
  2. AWS Partner Network
  3. AWS Professional Services
  4. AWS Support Center

Answer: A — AWS Marketplace

AWS Marketplace is where third-party software running on AWS is purchased, with cost management, governance and entitlement handled through the AWS bill.

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