Exam AWS Certified Solutions Architect - Associate SAA-C03 topic 1 question 24 discussion

https://www.examtopics.com/discussions/amazon/view/68306-exam-aws-certified-solutions-architect-associate-saa-c02/

The requested result is a graph, so... A - can't be as the result is a report B - can't be as it is limited to 14 days visibility and the graph has to cover 2 months C - seems to provide graphs and the best option available, as... D - could provide graphs, BUT involves operational overhead, which has been requested to be minimised.

- AWS Cost Explorer provides built-in visualizations and granular filtering by dimensions like instance type, linked account, region, and even EC2 instance ID

Use AWS Cost Explorer for an interactive, low-effort, and detailed view of EC2 cost trends by instance type — perfect for identifying unwanted vertical scaling. ❌ Why the Other Options Are Not Optimal: A. AWS Budgets Budgets help track and alert on cost thresholds, not analyze past cost trends in detail. It won’t show detailed instance-type usage or cost breakdowns over time. C. Billing and Cost Management dashboard Provides summary-level graphs, not granular filtering by EC2 instance types. Less useful for in-depth root cause analysis of instance size changes. D. Cost and Usage Reports + S3 + QuickSight While powerful, this setup involves significant operational overhead: Creating reports, Managing S3 buckets, Configuring QuickSight data sources and dashboards. Overkill for a quick comparison and analysis.

Cost Explorer always you to look back for a year or so

C cause Timescale in b is wrong

C can't provide granular filter.

I see lately that you can look back as far as 3 years.

Cost Explorer, AWS prepares the data about your costs for the current month and the last 12 months, and then calculates the forecast for the next 12 months. The current month's data is available for viewing in about 24 hours. The rest of your data takes a few days longer. Cost Explorer updates your cost data at least once every 24 hours.

Cost explorer has option to filter by service and we can modify the timeline also to compare the costs across 3 months

AWS Cost Explorer allows you to view cost and usage data with granular filtering. However, the historical data retention depends on the level of granularity: Daily granularity: You can access up to the past 12 months of daily cost and usage data. Hourly granularity: If you have detailed billing enabled, you can view up to the past 14 days of hourly usage data. Monthly granularity: You can access up to the past 12 months of cost and usage data, and also forecast costs for the next 12 months.

B. Use Cost Explorer's granular filtering feature to perform an in-depth analysis of EC2 costs based on instance types. Explanation: Cost Explorer provides an easy way to analyze AWS costs and usage visually. It allows you to filter data by multiple parameters, such as instance types, regions, and time periods. It also enables you to drill down and identify specific cost drivers, such as unwanted vertical scaling. This option is suitable because it provides granular insights with minimal operational overhead, as it is a built-in AWS tool specifically designed for cost analysis.

The correct answer is: B. Use Cost Explorer's granular filtering feature to perform an in-depth analysis of EC2 costs based on instance types. Explanation: Cost Explorer provides an easy way to analyze AWS costs and usage visually. It allows you to filter data by multiple parameters, such as instance types, regions, and time periods. It also enables you to drill down and identify specific cost drivers, such as unwanted vertical scaling. This option is suitable because it provides granular insights with minimal operational overhead, as it is a built-in AWS tool specifically designed for cost analysis. Why Other Options Are Less Suitable: C. AWS Billing and Cost Management Dashboard: It provides a high-level view of costs, but it lacks the specific filtering capabilities needed for a granular, instance-type-level analysis over time.

Option B: Use AWS Cost Explorer, a tool that makes it easy to view your costs and break them down into categories like EC2 instance types, time periods, and more. With Cost Explorer, you can easily filter the information to see which EC2 instance types caused the increase in costs over the last two months. This lets you do an in-depth analysis without much effort.

I would have gone for Ans B but apparently the right one is Ans C. I’m not convinced because neither B or C actually determine the root cause – they just point you in the right direction and then you’ll need to do some further analysis around resource demand (CPU, storage, network, etc), data/network traffic, what function/ instructions are actually being processed, along with taking a view of the scaling algorithms. On that basis I’d have said Ans B because it requires the LEAST overhead to get to the next step which is the one that matters: the root analysis for vertical scaling.

AWS Cost explorer will provide your usage and cost by main graph. https://docs.aws.amazon.com/cost-management/latest/userguide/ce-what-is.html

I think the highest priority is "with the LEAST operational overhead?". B is very good for "perform an in-depth analysis" but C overwhelming win on cost.