AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner (CLF-C02)Billing, Pricing, and SupportMedium
A cloud financial analyst wants an automated alert whenever the company's Reserved Instance utilization drops below 80% during the current billing period, indicating wasted commitment spend. Which AWS Budgets type should the analyst configure?
- AA usage budget tracking service quotas
- BA cost budget with a fixed monthly threshold
- CA Savings Plans coverage budget
- DA Reserved Instance utilization budget
Show answer & explanationAnswer & explanation
Correct answer: D. A Reserved Instance utilization budget
AWS Budgets supports RI/Savings Plans utilization budgets that alert when the percentage of purchased reserved capacity actually being used falls below a defined threshold, helping identify underutilized commitments. Cost and usage budgets track spend or resource consumption, not commitment utilization specifically.
Why the other options are wrong
- A. A usage budget tracks consumption of a specific usage metric like GB or hours, not RI utilization.
- B. A cost budget monitors overall spend against a dollar threshold, not RI usage efficiency.
- C. A coverage budget measures how much eligible usage is covered by commitments, not utilization percentage of purchased RIs.
RI/Savings Plans Utilization Budget
An AWS Budgets type that alerts when the percentage of purchased Reserved Instance or Savings Plan capacity actually used falls below a target threshold.
- Distinct from cost, usage, and coverage budgets
- Helps detect underused reservations wasting money
- Coverage budgets instead measure how much on-demand usage is covered by commitments
Memory trick: Cost = $, Usage = units, Utilization = wasted RIs, Coverage = eligible usage covered