AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner (CLF-C02) | Domain 4 EC2 Pricing and Savings Plans Questions 03

As of August 22, 2026, AWS naming conventions use the first letter before the period, c here, for the compute optimized series, the following 3 for the generation, and 4xlarge after the period for the size. The 4xlarge label is not a direct vCPU count, and neither the Region nor the operating system is determined by this part of the name.

As of August 22, 2026, Compute Savings Plans can apply across EC2 families, sizes, Regions, operating systems, and tenancy, as well as to eligible Fargate and Lambda usage. EC2 Instance Savings Plans are limited to a selected Region and family, so the broader flexibility of Compute Savings Plans fits a migration across services and Regions.

As of August 22, 2026, EC2 Instance Savings Plans commit to a family in a selected Region and automatically apply within that scope despite changes in size, operating system, Availability Zone, or tenancy. This fits a workload that can keep its Region and family fixed. A Capacity Reservation alone provides no discount, while Spot can be interrupted.

As of August 22, 2026, an immediate-use On-Demand Capacity Reservation reserves matching EC2 capacity in a specific Availability Zone. By itself, it provides no billing discount, and unused reserved capacity is charged at the On-Demand-equivalent rate. Savings Plans provide discounts but do not reserve launch capacity in a particular Zone.

As of August 22, 2026, capacity assurance and billing discounts are separate dimensions. An On-Demand Capacity Reservation can secure capacity in a specific Zone, while matching Savings Plans can discount the qualifying usage. Savings Plans alone do not reserve capacity, and a Capacity Reservation alone does not include a discount.

As of August 22, 2026, Savings Plans apply automatically to eligible usage until the commitment is exhausted. In this example, USD 10 at Savings Plans rates is covered by the commitment, and the remaining eligible usage is charged at the corresponding On-Demand rates. A commitment is not a usage limit, so excess usage is not rejected.

As of August 22, 2026, All Upfront pays the term in one upfront payment and offers the lowest price among the payment options for otherwise identical Savings Plans terms. No Upfront reduces initial spending but does not remove the term commitment. Partial Upfront combines an initial payment with continuing payments.

Under the definitions current on August 22, 2026, 65% utilization means that 35% of the commitment was unused, while 92% coverage means that 8% of eligible usage was not covered by Savings Plans. Because the metrics have different denominators, unused commitment and uncovered usage can coexist during the same period.

As of August 22, 2026, an EC2 RI is not a physical instance but primarily a billing discount applied to On-Demand Instance usage that matches specified attributes. Purchasing it does not launch a workload instance. A Zonal RI can also provide a capacity reservation benefit, but that still does not mean a configured dedicated server is created automatically.

As of August 22, 2026, price-capacity-optimized identifies Spot pools with high capacity availability and a lower expected interruption likelihood, then selects lower-priced pools among them. The lowest-price strategy does not adequately consider capacity conditions and can have a higher interruption rate. No strategy guarantees uninterrupted capacity, so checkpointing remains necessary.