CompTIA Cloud Essentials+ (CLO-002)Management and Technical OperationsEasy
A company is using a public cloud provider and has deployed several virtual machines (VMs) for different departments: 'Marketing', 'Sales', and 'Engineering'. Each department has its own budget and needs to track its cloud spending independently. Which cloud management feature is essential for accurately allocating costs to these respective departments?
- AConsolidated billing
- BCloud firewall rules
- CService quotas
- DResource tagging
Show answer & explanationAnswer & explanation
Correct answer: D. Resource tagging
Resource tagging allows administrators to associate metadata, such as 'Department: Marketing' or 'Project: X', with cloud resources. This enables precise cost allocation and reporting, making it possible to track spending per department.
Why the other options are wrong
- A. Consolidated billing aggregates invoices but doesn't break down costs by internal departments without further tagging.
- B. Cloud firewall rules control network traffic and have no direct function in cost allocation.
- C. Service quotas limit resource usage but don't provide a mechanism for cost allocation.
Cost Allocation Tags
Metadata labels applied to cloud resources to categorize and track costs for specific projects, departments, or environments.
- Enables granular cost visibility and chargeback/showback.
- Helps identify cost centers and optimize spending.
- Can be used in conjunction with billing reports and dashboards.
Memory trick: Tags for the budget, quotas for the limit, consolidated for the bill, firewall for the grit.