Optimization Practice Test 2026–2027 |
AWS Cost Management, Savings
Strategies & Detailed Answers
Question 1
A company wants to reduce its AWS bill while maintaining the same application
performance. Which approach is generally the best first step?
A. Purchase additional compute capacity
B. Analyze usage patterns and identify idle or underutilized resources
C. Move every workload to the largest instance size
D. Disable AWS billing alerts
Answer: B. Analyze usage patterns and identify idle or underutilized resources
Rationale: Cost optimization begins with understanding current consumption.
Identifying idle, orphaned, and underutilized resources can reduce spending
without negatively affecting application performance.
,Question 2
Which AWS service provides recommendations for reducing costs based on AWS
usage?
A. AWS Trusted Advisor
B. Amazon Inspector
C. AWS Shield
D. Amazon Macie
Answer: A. AWS Trusted Advisor
Rationale: AWS Trusted Advisor provides recommendations across several
categories, including cost optimization, security, performance, fault tolerance,
and service limits.
Question 3
A workload runs continuously for several years with predictable resource
requirements. Which purchasing option can provide lower costs than On-Demand
pricing?
A. Spot Instances only
B. Reserved Instances
C. AWS Free Tier
D. Dedicated Hosts purchased hourly
Answer: B. Reserved Instances
Rationale: Reserved Instances can provide significant discounts compared with
On-Demand pricing when workloads have predictable and steady usage.
Question 4
,A company has highly variable compute requirements and can tolerate
interruptions. Which option can provide substantial compute savings?
A. Spot Instances
B. Dedicated Hosts
C. On-Demand Instances only
D. Provisioned IOPS
Answer: A. Spot Instances
Rationale: Spot Instances use spare Amazon EC2 capacity and can be
substantially cheaper than On-Demand Instances. They are appropriate when
workloads can tolerate interruption.
Question 5
Which AWS tool is specifically designed to estimate the cost of AWS services
before deploying a workload?
A. AWS Pricing Calculator
B. AWS Artifact
C. AWS CloudTrail
D. AWS Config
Answer: A. AWS Pricing Calculator
Rationale: AWS Pricing Calculator allows users to model expected AWS service
usage and estimate costs before deployment.
Question 6
A company discovers several Amazon EC2 instances running continuously even
though their applications are rarely used. What is the most appropriate cost
optimization action?
, A. Increase their instance sizes
B. Stop or terminate unnecessary instances
C. Enable more EBS volumes
D. Purchase Dedicated Hosts
Answer: B. Stop or terminate unnecessary instances
Rationale: Removing or stopping unused resources eliminates unnecessary
charges. The appropriate action depends on whether the resources and their
data are still required.
Question 7
Which pricing model is generally most appropriate for unpredictable workloads
that cannot tolerate interruptions?
A. Spot Instances
B. On-Demand Instances
C. Reserved Instances exclusively
D. Savings Plans exclusively
Answer: B. On-Demand Instances
Rationale: On-Demand pricing provides flexibility without requiring a long-term
commitment and is suitable for workloads with unpredictable usage or short-
term requirements.
Question 8
A company wants to automatically identify resources that may be unnecessarily
increasing its AWS costs. Which service can help?
A. AWS Trusted Advisor
B. Amazon Route 53