Well-Architected Framework: Cost Optimization

1. What's the goal of the cost optimization pillar?

C. Cost optimization is about ROI, not the lowest bill.

2. Which practice brings finance, business and engineering together to manage cloud spend?

B. FinOps creates shared accountability for cloud costs.

3. Teams must be warned when their monthly spend reaches 80% of plan. What do you configure?

C. Budgets notify (and can trigger actions) at thresholds.

4. How do you attribute shared costs to the right team?

A. Tags plus cost allocation give showback/chargeback.

5. Which tool estimates the cost of a new design before deployment?

B. Estimate early so cost is a design input, not a surprise.

6. A non-production environment runs 24/7 but is only used office hours. What saves the most?

C. Pay only for what you use; dev/test rarely needs to run nights and weekends.

7. Which design choice usually lowers operational cost as well as infrastructure cost?

C. Total cost of ownership includes people and operations.

8. A VM averages 8% CPU over 30 days. What do you do?

A. Right-sizing removes paid-for idle capacity.

9. What's the difference between usage optimization and rate optimization?

D. Do usage optimization first, then commit to rates for the remaining baseline.

10. A stable baseline of VMs will run for 3 years with the same size and region. Biggest discount?

D. Reservations give the largest discount for steady, predictable usage.

11. Compute usage is steady in total but moves between VM families and regions. Which commitment fits?

C. Savings plans apply flexibly across compute services and regions.

12. Windows Server licenses with Software Assurance exist on-premises. What lowers Azure VM costs?

C. Hybrid Benefit lets you reuse licenses.

13. Interruptible batch jobs can run whenever capacity is available. Cheapest compute option?

A. Spot uses spare capacity at a deep discount, with eviction.

14. Which pricing is available for non-production subscriptions with Visual Studio subscribers?

B. Dev/Test offers lower rates for development and testing.

15. Blob data is rarely accessed after 60 days. How do you cut storage cost automatically?

A. Tiering matches cost to access patterns.

16. Which tool shows where money is spent, with trends and forecasts by tag, service or resource group?

B. Cost analysis is the main reporting tool for spend.

17. Why review costs continuously instead of once at launch?

A. Monitor, review and optimize on a regular cadence.

18. Unattached disks and unused public IPs keep showing up. What's the sustainable fix?

C. Governance and automation prevent orphaned resources.

19. How does autoscaling support cost optimization?

B. Scale in when load drops.

20. A design adds geo-redundancy that the business didn't require. What does the cost pillar say?

A. Every feature should justify its cost against a requirement.