Question

A SysOps administrator manages a development AWS account where engineers frequently leave EC2 instances running overnight. Management wants an automated control that not only alerts the team when monthly EC2 spend exceeds $2,000 but also automatically applies a restrictive IAM policy to prevent launching additional instances once the threshold is crossed. Which solution meets these requirements with the least custom development?

Accepted Answer

Create an AWS Budget with a cost threshold and configure a Budget action that attaches a restrictive IAM policy when the threshold is exceeded.

Answer

Enable AWS Cost Explorer rightsizing recommendations and schedule a Lambda function to terminate idle instances nightly.

Answer

Configure a CloudWatch billing alarm that publishes to an SNS topic subscribed by the engineering team's email.

Answer

Set up a Cost and Usage Report delivered to S3 and use Athena to query daily EC2 spend for manual review.