Domain 4 · 20% of Exam

Design Cost-Optimized Architectures

Domain 4 evaluates your ability to design cost-effective storage, compute, and database solutions, and apply cost optimization strategies.

What You'll Be Tested On

  • EC2 pricing models: On-Demand, Reserved, Savings Plans, Spot
  • S3 storage class selection and lifecycle policies
  • Right-sizing compute resources
  • Serverless architectures for cost optimization
  • Data transfer costs and optimization
  • AWS Cost Explorer, Budgets, and Trusted Advisor

Key AWS Services in This Domain

Exam Tips for Domain 4

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Compute Savings Plans offer the most flexibility compared to Reserved Instances.

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S3 Intelligent-Tiering automates cost savings for data with unknown access patterns.

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Spot Instances can save up to 90% but can be interrupted — use for fault-tolerant workloads.

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Use S3 lifecycle policies to transition data to cheaper tiers automatically.

Practice Domain 4 Questions

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