Data transfer cost awareness in AWS - Mini Project: Build & Apply

Data transfer cost awareness

📖 Scenario: You are managing an AWS environment where data transfer costs can add up quickly. To control expenses, you want to track how much data is transferred between different AWS services and regions.

🎯 Goal: Build a simple AWS configuration that defines data transfer usage metrics and sets thresholds to alert when costs might increase due to high data transfer.

📋 What You'll Learn

Create a dictionary with AWS services and their data transfer amounts in GB

Add a threshold value for maximum allowed data transfer in GB

Calculate which services exceed the threshold

Output a final configuration that lists services exceeding the threshold

💡 Why This Matters

🌍 Real World

Cloud engineers often need to monitor data transfer to avoid unexpected charges and optimize costs.

💼 Career

Understanding how to track and alert on data transfer usage is important for cost management roles in cloud operations.

1

Create data transfer dictionary

Create a dictionary called data_transfer_gb with these exact entries: 'EC2': 120, 'S3': 80, 'RDS': 50, 'Lambda': 30, 'CloudFront': 200

AWS

# Create the data_transfer_gb dictionary with exact values
# Your code here

Need a hint?

Use a Python dictionary with service names as keys and data transfer amounts as values.

2

Set data transfer threshold

Create a variable called threshold_gb and set it to 100 to represent the maximum allowed data transfer in GB.

AWS

data_transfer_gb = {'EC2': 120, 'S3': 80, 'RDS': 50, 'Lambda': 30, 'CloudFront': 200}
# Set the threshold_gb variable to 100
# Your code here

Need a hint?

Just assign the number 100 to the variable threshold_gb.

3

Identify services exceeding threshold

Create a list called high_transfer_services that contains the names of services from data_transfer_gb whose data transfer amount is greater than threshold_gb. Use a list comprehension with service and amount as variables.

AWS

data_transfer_gb = {'EC2': 120, 'S3': 80, 'RDS': 50, 'Lambda': 30, 'CloudFront': 200}
threshold_gb = 100
# Create high_transfer_services list with services exceeding threshold_gb
# Your code here

Need a hint?

Use a list comprehension to filter services where amount > threshold_gb.

4

Finalize configuration output

Create a dictionary called alert_config with a key 'services_exceeding_threshold' and assign it the value of high_transfer_services.

AWS

data_transfer_gb = {'EC2': 120, 'S3': 80, 'RDS': 50, 'Lambda': 30, 'CloudFront': 200}
threshold_gb = 100
high_transfer_services = [service for service, amount in data_transfer_gb.items() if amount > threshold_gb]
# Create alert_config dictionary with key 'services_exceeding_threshold'
# Your code here

Need a hint?

Create a dictionary with the specified key and assign the list of services exceeding the threshold.