A SysOps Administrator needs to report on Amazon EC2 instance cost by both project and environment (production, staging, development). Which action would impact the operations team the LEAST?

Question

Options

• AFor each project and environment, create a new AWS account and link them to the master payer
• BUse AWS Organizations to create a new organization for each project, then for each environment
• CImplement cost allocation tagging in the Billing and Cost Management console to implement tags
• DAdd the project and environment information to the instance metadata so that the values can be

• A
  4% (2)
• B
  10% (5)
• C
  80% (40)
• D
  6% (3)

Explanation

Cost allocation tags in AWS Billing and Cost Management let you label EC2 instances with key-value pairs (e.g., Project=Alpha, Environment=Production) and then filter/group Cost Explorer reports by those tags - zero infrastructure changes required, minimal operational overhead. Option A (creating separate AWS accounts per project/environment) is technically valid for cost isolation but is extremely disruptive, multiplying account management, IAM, networking, and billing complexity. Option B misunderstands AWS Organizations - you don't create separate organizations per project; Organizations manages a hierarchy of accounts, and misusing it this way would create unmanageable structures. Option D stores data in EC2 instance metadata, which is not integrated with the Billing and Cost Management service at all, so it cannot drive cost reports.

Memory tip: Think "tags = labels on your AWS bill." Whenever a question asks about cost reporting or attribution with least impact, cost allocation tags are almost always correct - they're purely additive (no resource changes, no new accounts, no restructuring) and are the AWS-native way to slice billing data.

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