Cost Management

Correct Answer: Review S3 bucket lifecycle policies to transition infrequently accessed objects to lower-cost storage classes and delete objects that are no longer needed.

Reviewing S3 bucket lifecycle policies is the most effective action to reduce S3 storage costs. By transitioning infrequently accessed objects to lower-cost storage classes like S3 Infrequent Access or S3 Glacier, you can optimize storage costs based on access patterns. Additionally, deleting objects that are no longer needed helps free up storage space and reduces overall costs. Increasing replication factor, enabling server-side encryption, or configuring S3 Transfer Acceleration do not directly contribute to reducing storage costs, as they focus on availability, security, and transfer speed respectively, rather than optimizing storage usage and costs.

Correct Answer: Understand the reason for the positive variance and reassess cost estimates if necessary.

The best next step after identifying that the project is under budget is to 'Understand the reason for the positive variance and reassess cost estimates if necessary.' This is because, being under budget could indicate a number of things, including overestimation of resources/cost, efficiency in the use of resources, or that some costs have not yet been accounted for. It is therefore necessary to dig deeper and understand why the project is under budget. Once known, cost projections can be tuned accurate to the project's needs. The answer 'Communicate the project is under budget and continue as planned' assumes that being under budget is automatically a good thing, but without understanding the reason this could lead to issues later on. 'Re-allocate excess funds to other projects' is premature without understanding if these funds will be needed later in the project. Finally, 'Automatically adjust the budget to match the project progress, without any further analysis' is not advisable, any budget adjustments should be based on careful analysis and understanding of the project's needs and status.

Correct Answer: Analyze the AWS Cost Explorer reports to identify the services and resources contributing to the high costs, then implement cost optimization best practices.

Analyzing the AWS Cost Explorer reports is the most effective way to identify the root cause of higher-than-expected monthly bills and optimize costs. Cost Explorer provides detailed insights into your AWS spending, allowing you to view costs by service, resource, and usage over time. By using Cost Explorer, you can quickly pinpoint the services and resources contributing to the high costs and take appropriate actions to optimize your spending, such as rightsizing instances, eliminating unused resources, or leveraging cost-saving options like Reserved Instances or Spot Instances. Contacting AWS support for a detailed breakdown and waiting for their recommendations is not as efficient as directly using Cost Explorer to gain insights. Manually reviewing the usage and pricing of each service is time-consuming and may not provide a comprehensive view of cost drivers. Increasing the project budget without addressing the root cause is not a sustainable solution for cost optimization.