AWS Cost Explorer basics - Practice Problems & Coding Challenges

Challenge - 5 Problems

❓ service_behavior

intermediate

Understanding AWS Cost Explorer Data Granularity

A user wants to analyze their AWS costs with daily detail using AWS Cost Explorer. Which granularity setting should they choose to see daily cost data?

A HOURLY

B MONTHLY

C DAILY

D WEEKLY

💡 Hint

Think about the smallest time unit AWS Cost Explorer supports for cost granularity.

AWS Cost Explorer supports DAILY granularity to show cost data broken down by each day. MONTHLY and WEEKLY are coarser, and HOURLY is not supported for cost granularity.

🧠 Conceptual

intermediate

Filtering Cost Data by Service in AWS Cost Explorer

Which filter should you apply in AWS Cost Explorer to view costs only for Amazon EC2 services?

A Filter by Linked Account

B Filter by Service

C Filter by Tag Key

D Filter by Usage Type

💡 Hint

Think about which filter directly relates to AWS products like EC2, S3, etc.

The 'Service' filter lets you select specific AWS services such as Amazon EC2 to view their cost data separately.

❓ Architecture

advanced

Best Practice for Cost Allocation Tags in AWS Cost Explorer

A company wants to track costs by project and environment using AWS Cost Explorer. What is the best practice to achieve this?

A Enable and use cost allocation tags for project and environment on resources

B Use AWS Cost Categories to group costs by project and environment

C Manually export billing data and filter by project and environment in a spreadsheet

D Use AWS Budgets to track costs by project and environment

💡 Hint

Consider how AWS Cost Explorer can automatically group costs by custom labels.

Enabling cost allocation tags for project and environment allows AWS Cost Explorer to break down costs by these tags automatically, making tracking easier and more accurate.

❓ security

advanced

IAM Permissions Required for AWS Cost Explorer Access

Which IAM permission is required to allow a user to view cost and usage reports in AWS Cost Explorer?

A ce:GetCostAndUsage

B s3:GetObject

C ec2:DescribeInstances

D billing:ViewBilling

💡 Hint

Look for the permission that starts with 'ce' related to Cost Explorer.

The 'ce:GetCostAndUsage' permission allows users to retrieve cost and usage data from AWS Cost Explorer.

✅ Best Practice

expert

Optimizing Cost Explorer Queries for Large AWS Accounts

A large AWS account with many resources experiences slow AWS Cost Explorer queries. What is the best practice to improve query performance?

A Export all billing data to CSV and analyze offline only

B Increase the number of IAM users querying Cost Explorer simultaneously

C Disable cost allocation tags to simplify data processing

D Reduce the date range and use filters to limit data scope in queries

💡 Hint

Think about how limiting data scope affects query speed.

Reducing the date range and applying filters limits the amount of data processed, improving query speed and responsiveness in AWS Cost Explorer.