Tracking Monthly EC2 Cost and Usage in AWS

Why the Answer Is Correct

AWS Budgets (B) is the tool designed to track cost and usage metrics on a defined cadence—monthly, quarterly, or yearly—and it supports granular filtering by AWS Service (so only Amazon EC2 instances), Availability Zone, Linked Account, and cost allocation tags, which matches the "specific AWS environment" requirement. Budgets lets the company set a budgeted amount for EC2, track actual and forecasted cost and usage against it, and receive alerts when thresholds are breached or forecasted to be exceeded. AWS documentation explicitly states that AWS Budgets gives you the ability to track your costs and your usage, which is exactly what the question asks for. Because the requirement is ongoing tracking of both cost and usage in a scoped environment, Budgets is the precise fit.

Why the Other Options Are Wrong

AWS Cost Anomaly Detection (A) uses machine learning to identify unusual spikes in spend across services, accounts, and tags, but it does not track cost and usage against a monthly plan—it only flags anomalies after they occur, so it cannot fulfill a defined monthly tracking requirement. AWS Compute Optimizer (C) analyzes utilization metrics and recommends optimal EC2 instance types to reduce cost or improve performance; it produces recommendations, not cost and usage tracking. AWS Trusted Advisor (D) inspects your account against best-practice checks (cost optimization, security, fault tolerance, etc.) and offers recommendations, but it is not a budget or cost-tracking tool. None of these three options provides monthly cost-and-usage tracking with configurable filters and alerts the way Budgets does.

Community Comment Notes

The community unanimously selected B, and the reasoning aligns with AWS documentation. One commenter, Inptic, explained that "AWS Budgets allows you to track your monthly costs and usage for AWS services, including Amazon EC2 instances" and to "receive alerts when you exceed or are forecasted to exceed your budgeted thresholds." Another commenter, its_tima, usefully contrasted the tools, noting that AWS Budgets provides "filtering dimensions (i.e., AWS Service, Availability Zone, and Member Account)" on a monthly cadence, whereas AWS Cost Anomaly Detection merely lets you "define the spend segments you want to evaluate"—a distinction that confirms why A is a distractor and B is correct.