Billing, Pricing, and Support
What you will learn
In this domain, you will learn the AWS pay-as-you-go pricing model, the cost management tools (Cost Explorer, Budgets), the pricing options (On-Demand, Reserved Instances, Savings Plans, and Spot), and the four types of support plans. At 12% it carries the smallest exam weight, but it is an area you cannot avoid in practice either.
Key points
- The basic AWS pricing model is pay-as-you-go - you pay only for what you use
- EC2 purchase options - On-Demand, Reserved Instances (RIs, discounted with a 1- to 3-year commitment), Savings Plans (flexible discounts), and Spot (up to 90% off, but subject to interruption)
- AWS Cost Explorer visualizes past cost trends, AWS Budgets alerts you when you exceed a budget, and AWS Pricing Calculator estimates costs in advance
- Consolidated Billing - combine the bills of multiple accounts into one with AWS Organizations and share volume discounts
- Trusted Advisor - checks best practices across five categories: cost optimization, performance, security, fault tolerance, and service limits
- Support plans - the four types Basic (free), Developer, Business, and Enterprise differ in scope and response time
Terms and concepts
EC2 Pricing Options (On-Demand / RI / Savings Plans / Spot)
On-Demand is billed by the hour and is flexible, Reserved Instances (RIs) offer a 40-70% discount with a 1- to 3-year commitment, Savings Plans are more flexible than RIs because they commit to a usage amount, and Spot lets you use spare capacity at up to 90% off but may be interrupted. For long-term use, RIs / Savings Plans are candidates, while Spot is a candidate for interruptible batch workloads.
→ Savings Plans vs RI Comparison ・ → Making the Most of Spot Instances
AWS Cost Explorer and AWS Budgets
Cost Explorer visualizes past costs and usage in graphs and lets you analyze them by service and by tag. Budgets lets you set a monthly budget and notifies you by email or SNS when you are about to exceed it. Cost Explorer is for looking back, while Budgets is for prevention, so their purposes differ.
→ Strategies for Cost Visualization ・ → Budget Management with AWS Budgets
Consolidated Billing and Organizations
Using the Consolidated Billing feature of AWS Organizations, you can combine the bills of multiple AWS accounts into one. Because volume discounts, such as those for S3, can be applied to the combined usage of all accounts, cost efficiency improves across the entire organization.
AWS Support Plans
Basic is free and provides only AWS Health and basic documentation. Developer offers technical support with a response within 12 hours, Business offers 24/7 support with a response within 1 hour, and Enterprise includes a dedicated TAM (Technical Account Manager) with a response within 15 minutes. For production environments, Business or higher is common.
AWS Trusted Advisor
A service that checks your AWS environment across five categories - cost optimization, performance, security, fault tolerance, and service limits - and offers recommendations for improvement. The Basic / Developer plans provide only a limited set of checks, while Business and above provide the full feature set.
Check your understanding
Check what you have learned with 5 questions