AWS Cost and Usage Report Dashboard with QuickSight and Athena

SAA-C03 By islever Editorial Last updated

Design cost-optimized storage solutions.

Short answer

B Share an Amazon QuickSight dashboard that includes the requested table visual. Configure QuickSight to use Amazon Athena to query the new report.

Question

A company that uses AWS Organizations runs 150 applications across 30 different AWS accounts. The company used AWS Cost and Usage Report to create a new report in the management account. The report is delivered to an Amazon S3 bucket that is replicated to a bucket in the data collection account. The company’s senior leadership wants to view a custom dashboard that provides NAT gateway costs each day starting at the beginning of the current month. Which solution will meet these requirements?
  1. Share an Amazon QuickSight dashboard that includes the requested table visual. Configure QuickSight to use AWS DataSync to query the new report.
  2. Share an Amazon QuickSight dashboard that includes the requested table visual. Configure QuickSight to use Amazon Athena to query the new report. Correct Answer
  3. Share an Amazon CloudWatch dashboard that includes the requested table visual. Configure CloudWatch to use AWS DataSync to query the new report.
  4. Share an Amazon CloudWatch dashboard that includes the requested table visual. Configure CloudWatch to use Amazon Athena to query the new report.

Key Takeaways

The question tests the integration of AWS CUR, S3, Athena, and QuickSight, where the common trap is confusing CloudWatch's purpose or misidentifying the query engine for S3-based reports.

This guide explains how to visualize AWS Cost and Usage Report data stored in S3 using Amazon QuickSight for dashboards and Amazon Athena for querying, ensuring senior leadership can view daily NAT gateway costs.

Common mistake: Candidates often choose CloudWatch because they associate 'dashboards' with CloudWatch, failing to recognize that CloudWatch is primarily for operational metrics and logs, not financial reporting from S3.

Expert Analysis

Why the Answer Is Correct

Amazon Athena is a serverless interactive query service that allows you to analyze data directly in Amazon S3 using standard SQL. Since the AWS Cost and Usage Report (CUR) is delivered as files to an S3 bucket, Athena is the appropriate tool to query this data efficiently without moving it. Amazon QuickSight is AWS's business intelligence service designed for creating custom dashboards and visualizations. By configuring QuickSight to connect to Athena, senior leadership can view dynamic, cost-optimized dashboards showing specific metrics like NAT gateway costs. This combination leverages the scalability of Athena and the visualization capabilities of QuickSight.

Why the Other Options Are Wrong

Option A suggests using AWS DataSync with QuickSight; however, AWS DataSync is for transferring data between on-premises and AWS storage services, not for querying S3 data within a BI tool. Option C and D suggest using Amazon CloudWatch. While CloudWatch has dashboards, it is designed for monitoring operational resources (EC2, Lambda, etc.) and does not natively query S3-hosted financial reports via Athena. CloudWatch cannot serve as the primary interface for analyzing large-scale CSV/Parquet CUR files in S3.

Community Comment Notes

Community consensus strongly supports option B. As user Mikado211 noted, "You definitely use Athena to request S3," highlighting the necessity of Athena for S3 queries. Another user, sandordini, summarized the logic: "Senior Leadership, custom dashboard, visualization: Quicksight" and "S3 query: Athena." The comments consistently reinforce that QuickSight is the correct dashboarding tool for this scenario over CloudWatch.

Official Reference

https://docs.aws.amazon.com/athena/latest/ug/querying-curf.html

This link opens the official vendor documentation in a new tab.

Exam Strategy

When asked about visualizing financial or log data stored in S3, always consider Athena for the query layer and QuickSight for the visualization layer. Reserve CloudWatch for real-time infrastructure performance monitoring.

Frequently Asked Questions

Why not use CloudWatch for the dashboard?

CloudWatch is for operational metrics/logs, not for querying large S3-based financial reports like CUR.

Can QuickSight query S3 directly without Athena?

QuickSight can connect to S3, but Athena provides the SQL engine needed to efficiently query structured CUR files for custom dashboards.

More SAA-C03 FAQ →

Community Votes

B
100%

100% of anonymous learners picked answer B. Votes are pick records left by other test-takers — they are not the verified answer.

Discussion 5 contributions

Compiled from public community threads and reader submissions, lightly edited for clarity. Handles and vote tallies are shown as recorded, and comments reflect the views of individual contributors.

From public community threads 5

  1. Mikado211 👍 4 Answered B
    You definitely use Athena to request S3. Both cloudwatch and quicksight can interact with S3. Since we are taking about "The company’s senior leadership" I'd tend to use quicksight for a better format.
  2. sandordini 👍 3 Answered B
    Senior Leadership, custom dashboard, visualization: Quicksight Dashboard S3 query: Athena
  3. KennethNg923 👍 3 Answered B
    QuickSight for dashboard and Athena for query each month so it is B
  4. d401c0d 👍 2 Answered B
    B. Share an Amazon QuickSight dashboard that includes the requested table visual. Configure QuickSight to use Amazon Athena to query the new report. QuickSight works well with Athena and it can interact S3
  5. mk168898 👍 2
    dashboard => quicksight, S3 query => athena

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