A company has found that many of its running Amazon EC2 instances have very low utilization relative to their allocated specifications. Which action is MOST appropriate to optimize costs?
A question asking for the cost-optimization action for underutilized instances.
Change to a smaller instance type that matches the utilization (right-sizing).
Correct. Instances that are oversized relative to their utilization create wasted cost. By performing right-sizing — changing to an appropriate size that matches actual usage — you can reduce cost while maintaining performance. This is a fundamental cost-optimization practice.
Change all instances to even larger types.
Making instances larger when utilization is already low increases wasted cost.
This is the opposite of cost optimization, so it is incorrect.
Leave everything as is without worrying about cost.
Leaving underutilized resources in place keeps generating wasted cost.
It does not meet the goal of optimizing cost, so it is incorrect.
Changing the Region will automatically optimize it.
Changing the Region alone does not automatically resize instances to match utilization.
Correcting oversized specs requires right-sizing, so it is incorrect.
“Low utilization” and “cost optimization” point to right-sizing. Reduce the size to match actual usage. Stopping/deleting unused resources and reserved purchasing are also standard optimizations.