Before migrating a permitting system, a municipal architect must estimate next year’s EC2, RDS, and data-transfer costs for a budget request. Which AWS tool fits?
Select an answer to reveal the explanation.
Short Explanation
Estimating next year’s bill before anything is running is Pricing Calculator territory. Cost and Usage Reports and Budgets care about what already happened or what you already set as a limit.
Full Explanation
Before migrating a permitting system, a municipal architect who must estimate next year's EC2, RDS, and data-transfer costs for a budget request should use AWS Pricing Calculator. The Pricing Calculator builds forward-looking cost estimates for planned services and architecture assumptions—exactly what finance needs in a greenfield or migration budget narrative before actual usage exists.
AWS Cost and Usage Report exports detailed actuals after usage occurs; it cannot invent next year's unused migration estimate by itself. Amazon GuardDuty detects threats rather than estimating service prices. AWS Budgets alerts on thresholds but does not model a full greenfield estimate worksheet. Actuals, threat detection, and alerts are the wrong planning tools for pre-migration estimates.
Exam caveat: Calculator estimates; Cost Explorer analyzes history; Budgets alerts; CUR details actuals. Budget request before migration → Pricing Calculator.
Operational check for permitting migration: model EC2, RDS, storage, and data transfer with realistic utilization assumptions, include Multi-AZ and backup costs, share the estimate link with finance, revisit after a pilot with actual Cost Explorer data, and clearly label the worksheet as an estimate—not an invoice—so council procurement understands uncertainty bands.