3.5 Cost Optimization Opportunities

Analysis Tools

Trusted Advisor

• Checks: Cost Optimization, Performance, Security, Fault Tolerance, Service Limits.
• Cost Check: Identifies “Idle Load Balancers”, “Low Utility EC2s”, “Unassociated Elastic IPs”.
• Action: Provides recommendations but doesn’t automatically fix (mostly).

WARNING

Exam Gotcha: Trusted Advisor checks for Service Limits (Quotas) usage (e.g., reaching 80% of limit).

Billing & Reporting

Cost and Usage Report (CUR)

• Function: The most detailed billing data available.
• Format: CSV files delivered to S3.
• Analysis:
  • Use Athena to query CUR via SQL.
  • Use QuickSight to visualize CUR data.

Cost Anomaly Detection

• Function: ML-based detection of unusual spend.
• Notification: SNS/Email alerts.

WARNING

Exam Gotcha: Cost Explorer is for high-level visual analysis. CUR is for raw, granular data access. If you need to “Programmatically query billing data”, thinking CUR + Athena.