A company runs a large number of Amazon EC2 instances for internal departments. The company needs to track the costs of its existing AWS resources by department. What should a SysOps administrator…

Question

Options

• AActivate all of the AWS generated cost allocation tags for the account.
• BApply user-defined tags to the instances through Tag Editor. Activate these tags for cost
• CSchedule an AWS Lambda function to run the AWS Pricing Calculator for EC2 usage on a
• DUse the AWS Trusted Advisor dashboard to export EC2 cost reports.

• A
  8% (3)
• B
  70% (26)
• C
  16% (6)
• D
  5% (2)

Explanation

Tracking EC2 Costs by Department Using Tags

Option B is correct because user-defined tags (e.g., "Department: Finance") allow you to categorize resources by business unit, and once activated as cost allocation tags in AWS Billing, they appear as filterable columns in Cost Explorer and detailed billing reports - giving precise per-department cost visibility.

Why the distractors are wrong:

• Option A is incorrect because AWS-generated tags (like aws:createdBy) track who created resources, not which department owns them - they don't provide department-level cost tracking out of the box.
• Option C is incorrect because AWS Pricing Calculator is a pre-deployment estimation tool, not a real-time cost tracking solution for existing resources.
• Option D is incorrect because AWS Trusted Advisor focuses on security, performance, and optimization recommendations - it does not generate department-level cost allocation reports.

Memory Tip: Think of it as a two-step process: first Tag (label your resources with department names using Tag Editor), then Activate (enable those tags in Billing settings). The phrase "Tag it, Activate it, Track it" will help you remember that both steps are required for cost allocation to work.

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