Domain 1 of 4 · Chapter 5 of 5

Cost optimization and visibility across accounts

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Included in this chapter:

  • Consolidated billing, payer account, discount pooling
  • Visibility: Cost Explorer, CUR, Budgets, Anomaly Detection
  • Cost allocation tags and cost categories at org scale
  • Commitment strategy: Savings Plans vs RIs, Spot, rightsizing
  • Chargeback/showback with Billing Conductor + exam patterns

Compute purchase options for SAP-C02 cost decisions

AttributeOn-DemandCompute Savings PlanStandard RIConvertible RISpot
Max discount vs On-Demand0% (baseline)Up to 66%Up to 72%Lower than Standard RIUp to 90%
Commitment termNone1 or 3 years1 or 3 years1 or 3 yearsNone
Flexibility (family/size/OS/Region)FullFull (also Fargate + Lambda)Locked to instance attributesExchangeable for other RIsFull
Interruption riskNoneNoneNoneNone2-min termination notice
Shareable across the orgN/AYes (discount sharing)Yes (discount sharing)Yes (discount sharing)N/A
Best forUnpredictable / short-livedSteady mixed computeSteady, fixed instance typeSteady but evolving needsFault-tolerant batch / stateless

Decision tree

Interruption-tolerant, stateless workload? Yes No Spot Instances up to 90% off; 2-min notice Steady, always-on baseline? No Yes On-Demand spiky / short-lived; no commit Need flexibility (family/Region, Fargate + Lambda)? Yes No Compute Savings Plan up to 66%; most flexible, covers Fargate/Lambda Reserve capacity in a specific AZ? Yes No Zonal Standard RI deep discount + AZ capacity reservation EC2 Instance SP or Standard RI; up to 72%, locks family + Region Always: rightsize with Compute Optimizer (14-day lookback) before committing; pool benefit via discount sharing. Needs likely to evolve over the term? Prefer a Convertible RI (exchangeable) over a Standard RI.
Cheat sheet

Cheat sheet

  • Activate cost allocation tags before they appear, and not retroactively
  • Consolidate accounts so usage pools before tiered pricing and commitments share
  • RI/SP discount sharing is per-account, set by the management account
  • Use unblended (or amortized) cost for chargeback, not blended
  • Cost Explorer shows 13 months back and forecasts 18 months out
  • Reach for CUR when you need the most granular billing data
  • Cost categories are rule-based groupings, effective from the current month by default but backdatable up to 12 months
  • Cost Anomaly Detection uses ML and is free, but only alerts
  • AWS Budgets actions can enforce a threshold, not just notify
  • Pick a Compute Savings Plan when the workload mix will shift
  • Pick an EC2 Instance Savings Plan for a known steady family in one Region
  • Savings Plans discount but never reserve capacity; Zonal RIs reserve
  • Convertible RIs exchange; only Standard RIs sell on the Marketplace
  • Rightsize with Compute Optimizer before you commit
  • Billing Conductor builds a pro forma view, not a new AWS invoice
  • Enhanced infrastructure metrics extend Compute Optimizer's lookback to 93 days

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Also tested in

References

  1. Consolidated billing for AWS Organizations
  2. Service control policies (SCPs)
  3. Analyzing your costs with AWS Cost Explorer
  4. What is the AWS Cost and Usage Report?
  5. Getting started with AWS Cost Anomaly Detection
  6. Activating user-defined cost allocation tags
  7. Managing your costs with AWS cost categories
  8. Using Amazon EC2 Spot Instances
  9. What are Savings Plans?
  10. What is AWS Compute Optimizer?
  11. Managing your costs with AWS Budgets
  12. Turning off shared reserved instances and Savings Plans discounts
  13. Savings Plans types
  14. What is AWS Billing Conductor?