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Cloud Cost Modeling and Planning Questions

Building and evaluating cost models for cloud adoption and migration, including estimating total cost of ownership, comparing on premise and cloud deployment costs, and developing business cases for cloud investments. Skills include mapping workload characteristics to cloud pricing models, forecasting usage and growth, accounting for licensing and migration one time costs, modeling ongoing operational costs, and incorporating discounts such as reserved capacity and spot pricing. Also covers scenario and sensitivity analysis, capacity planning and rightsizing, cost governance practices such as tagging and showback or chargeback, measuring financial outcomes and return on investment, and strategies for post migration cost optimization and financial monitoring.

MediumTechnical
29 practiced
As Cloud Architect, describe how you would build a forecasting pipeline to predict cloud resource usage with seasonality (daily/weekly/annual) and incorporate it into capacity planning and budget forecasts. Include data sources, candidate modeling techniques, validation/backtesting approach, and automation considerations.
MediumTechnical
26 practiced
Write a Python script outline (or describe in detail) that ingests a cloud billing CSV with columns: date, account_id, resource_id, tags (JSON), service, amount_usd. The script should output monthly spend per owner tag, handle missing tags via a fallback mapping (account to cost center), and flag the top 10 contributors to month-over-month increases. Specify libraries, functions, and edge cases to handle.
EasyTechnical
30 practiced
Your current on-prem monthly cost for an application is $18,000. Cloud estimated ongoing monthly running cost is $12,000, and the one-time migration cost is $120,000. Calculate the payback period in months, state the assumptions behind the simple payback metric, and explain its limitations compared with NPV or IRR analyses.
HardTechnical
28 practiced
Describe a Python-based program (pseudocode acceptable) that ingests daily billing line items, detects anomalies (sudden spikes, new untagged resource usage, unexpected service categories), attributes probable owners when tags are missing using heuristics (resource naming, account ownership, IP ranges), and outputs a prioritized action list. Discuss algorithms, libraries, thresholds, and methods to reduce false positives.
MediumTechnical
24 practiced
You manage a fleet that has a small predictable baseline and large, unpredictable bursty usage spanning multiple instance families. How would you model and decide between reserved instances, convertible RIs, savings plans, on-demand, and spot to minimize cost while retaining flexibility? Describe the data inputs, modeling approach, and decision criteria.

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