Which of the following would be the ‘primary advantages’ of using cloud over on premises services? (Select Two)
- A . Cost Savings
- B . Speed of delivery
- C . Innovation
- D . Ease of use
AB
Explanation:
Correct Answers: Speed of Delivery and Innovation
Cloud provides many benefits. Cost savings and ease of use can certainly be benefits but the question was targeting a comparison to onpremises.
One of the reasons that managing Kubernetes costs in the cloud can be challenging is that the average lifespan of a container is one day. (True or False)
- A . True
- B . False
A
Explanation:
Kubernetes is a challenge to manage, both on premises and in the cloud. Containerized environments are much more dynamic than non-containerized ones, with the average lifespan of a container being one day versus a typically much longer utilization time for a VM. Given the dynamic nature of the Kubernetes scheduler, workloads can be rescheduled across instance type, zone, or even region. This makes cost management even more complex, as you must keep up with the rapid pace of change.
Which of the following statements would be true regarding FinOps? (Select One)
- A . FinOps ensures that you get the best performance out of every service used in the cloud
- B . FinOps ensures that your financial team manages cloud spending
- C . FinOps ensures you get the most use out of every service used in the cloud
- D . FinOps ensures you get the most value out of every dollar spent in cloud
D
Explanation:
FinOps ensures you get the most value out of every dollar spent in cloud
FinOps ensures you get the most value out of every dollar spent in cloud. FinOps enables a shift ― a combination of systems, best practices and culture ― to increase an organization’s ability to understand cloud costs and make business tradeoffs. In the same way that DevOps revolutionized development by breaking down silos and increasing agility, FinOps increases the business value of cloud by bringing together technology, business and finance professionals with a new set of processes.
Reference this page here What is FinOPs
When proposing the adoption of a FinOps function within an organization, there will be a need to brief a variety of personas among the executive team to gain approval, buy-in, and involvement in conducting FinOps and achieving its goals. Every role has a clearly documented Primary Goal.
What is the primary goal for a Chief Executive Officer (CEO)? (Select One)
- A . Assurance that cloud investments are aligned with business objectives
- B . Quickly bring new products and features to market with an accurate price point.
- C . Leverage technology to give the business a market and competitive advantage
- D . Drive best practices into the organization through education, standardization, and cheerleading
A
Explanation:
Assurance that cloud investments are aligned with business objectives
There are clearly labeled roles for each ‘Persona’ and we must learn these for the exam. FinOps Personas
The FinOps journey consists of three iterative phases ― Inform, Optimize and Operate.
Which of the following statements would be a correct description of the Inform Phase? (Select One)
- A . Continuously evaluate business objectives and the metrics they are tracking against those objectives, and how they are trending.
- B . Optimize their cloud footprint. Cloud providers offer multiple levers to optimize.
- C . Empowering organizations and teams with visibility, allocation, benchmarking, budgeting, and forecasting.
C
Explanation:
Empowering organizations and teams with visibility, allocation, benchmarking, budgeting, and forecasting.
This is the first phase in the FinOps journey, empowering organizations and teams with visibility, allocation, benchmarking, budgeting, and forecasting. The on-demand and elastic nature of cloud, along with customized pricing and discounts, makes it necessary for accurate and timely visibility for intelligent decisions. Accurate allocation of cloud spend based on tags, accounts, or business mappings enable accurate chargeback and showback. Business and financial stakeholders also want to ensure they are driving ROI while staying within budget and accurately forecasting spend, avoiding surprises. Benchmarking as a cohort and against teams provides organizations with the necessary metrics to develop a high performing team.
For the exam it is critical we can distinguish between the Phases…
This is direct from the FinOps Foundation https://www.finops.org/framework/phases/
Which of the following are the FinOps sponsored Maturity Assessment Model steps/phases? (Select Three)
- A . Evaluate
- B . Run
- C . Walk
- D . Crawl
- E . Assess
BCD
Explanation:
Crawl: This is the initial phase when organizations start experimenting and implementing some basic FinOps practices.
Walk: In this stage, the organization has a deeper understanding and practice of FinOps and begins to integrate and optimize processes.
Run: The most mature stage, the organization has fully integrated FinOps practices into its business processes and can effectively manage and optimize cloud costs.
You have been asked to assemble the first FinOps team for your company.
What would be two factors you must consider when organizing your team? (Select Two)
- A . Cloud provider billing models
- B . Complexity of the Cloud usage
- C . Location of your team members
- D . Complexity of your organization
AD
Explanation:
Correct Answers: Complexity of your cloud usage and Complexity of your organization
The complexity of your organization can entail the layers of your management, size of the business units, experience of employees, etc. The complexity of your cloud usage can be really critical to understand what cost structure are efficient and what ones may not be. Team members from engineering think and speak differently as opposed to members from finance so we must have a common approach to communications to reduce complexity.
When proposing the adoption of a FinOps function within an organization, there will be a need to brief a variety of personas among the executive team to gain approval, buy-in, and involvement in conducting FinOps and achieving its goals. Every role has a clearly documented Primary Goal.
What is the primary goal for the procurement business unit? (Select One)
- A . Assurance that cloud investments are aligned with business objectives
- B . Cloud platform relationship management
- C . Quickly bring new products and features to market with an accurate price point.
- D . Drive best practices into the organization through education, standardization, and cheerleading
B
Explanation:
Cloud Platform Management
There are clearly labeled roles for each ‘Persona’ and we must learn these for the exam. FinOps Personas
Please refer to the graphic of the Phases of the FinOps Lifecycle for this question
What is the correct order of the FinOps Lifecycle phases? Please replace 1,2,3 with correct sequence (Select One)
- A . Inform, Operate and Optimize
- B . Inform, Optimize and Operate
- C . Optimize, Inform, Operate
- D . Optimize, Operate, Inform
B
Explanation:
Please refer to the graphic of the Phases of the FinOps Lifecycle for this question
What is the correct order of the FinOps Lifecycle phases? Please replace 1,2,3 with correct sequence (Select One)
- A . Inform, Operate and Optimize
- B . Inform, Optimize and Operate
- C . Optimize, Inform, Operate
- D . Optimize, Operate, Inform
B
Explanation:
Your currently adopting FinOps in your organization and are in Stage 1 – Planning for FinOps in an organization.
Which of the following two exercises would be understand Stage 1? (Select Two)
- A . Practice Formation
- B . Do Your Research
- C . Build a Toolbox
- D . Create a Plan
B,D
Explanation:
Correct Answers: Do Your Research and Create a Plan
The FinOps Foundation a clear ‘Adopting FinOps’ Slide deck that we must review if we have not purchased the FInOps book. Please find the Slide Deck here
Each major cloud provider labels the platforms ‘allocation metadata’ a specific way.
How does AWS name the allocation metadata? (Select One)
- A . “Resource tags”, “Linked Accounts” and “groups”
- B . “Subscription’. ‘Labels” and “billing accounts”
- C . “Resource tags”, “Linked Accounts” and “Organizations”
- D . “Subscriptions”, “resource groups” and “resource tags”
C
Explanation:
“Resource tags”, “Linked Accounts” and “Organizations”;
GCP “labels” and “billing accounts”;
AWS “resource tags”, “Linked Accounts” and “Organizations”; Azure “Subscriptions”, “Resource Groups” and “resource tags”
We do need to know some cloud provider specific terms for the exam. Refer here before the exam FinOps Terminology
What is FinOps really about at its fundamental level? (Select One)
- A . Saving money on cloud costs
- B . Drive business value
- C . Reduce staff
- D . Centralized procurement
B
Explanation:
Drive Business Value
Definition from FinOps Foundation. FinOps ensures you get the most value out of every dollar spent in cloud. FinOps enables a shift ― a combination of systems, best practices and culture ― to increase an organization’s ability to understand cloud costs and make business tradeoffs. FinOps Value
When considering shared costs we know that there are three main ways to accomplish this according to the FinOps Foundation.
What approach would we want to use if we wanted to use a ‘relative percentage of direct costs’ for our costs? (Select One)
- A . Fixed
- B . Proportional
- C . Odd Split
- D . Even Split
B
Explanation:
Proportional
There are typically three ways to split up shared costs:
Proportional: Based on relative percentage of direct costs
Even split: Split total amount evenly across targets
Fixed: User-defined coefficient (the sum of coefficients needs to be 100%)
This page here is perhaps one of the most important pages to review and understand before the exam. Identifying Shared Costs
What term would we use to define the act of changing the size of provisioned resources to one that better matches needs? (Select One)
- A . Right-Sizing
- B . Cost Avoidance
- C . Cost Reduction
- D . Provisioning
A
Explanation:
Right Sizing
When a cloud resource is provisioned larger than is required, such as having too much memory or compute power, it’s considered oversized. Rightsizing is the act of changing the size of provisioned resources to one that better matches needs.
What is Technology Business Management (TBM)? (Select One)
- A . TBM is a value management framework for decision making.
- B . TBM is an engineering framework used for FinOps
- C . TBM is a value management framework for cost management
- D . TBM is a cost management framework for accountants
A
Explanation:
FinOps Requires a Cultural Shift At its core, FinOps is a cultural practice. This operating model is the most efficient way for teams to manage their cloud costs. Using FinOps, teams can come together to deliver faster while gaining financial and operational control. FinOps What is?
Your currently working with the head of finance to understand how to identify specific cloud usage to specific business units.
What would we use to account for costs for each business units and then debit the business unit for the cloud usage?
- A . Chargeback
- B . Resevationss
- C . Showback
- D . Allocation
- E . Turnback
A
Explanation:
Chargebacks and showbacks both represent processes where departments are asked to be accountable for their technology usage and resources by being given visibility of the costs associated with it.
Chargebacks offer departmental visibility into IT resource usage and also charge departments for their use
Showbacks offer departmental visibility into IT resource usage without charging departments for their use.
Which of the following would be the most direct description of what FinOps is about? (Select One)
- A . FinOps brings administrative accountability to the variable spend model of cloud.
- B . FinOps is about both culture and creating savings in the world of cloud computing.
- C . FinOps brings financial accountability to the variable spend model of cloud.
- D . FinOps is about both finance and creating savings in the world of cloud computing.
C
Explanation:
FinOps is shorthand for “Cloud Financial Operations” or “Cloud Financial Management” or “Cloud Cost Management”. It is the practice of bringing financial accountability to the variable spend model of cloud, enabling distributed teams to make business trade-offs between speed, cost, and quality.
This page here is a must view for the exam. You would likely see numerous questions directly from the
page. Study Up!
What is FinOPs
In the Inform Stage of the FinOps cycle which of the following would be true regarding. (Select One)
- A . Using the data from the Inform stage will enable FinOps teams to balance operational requirements with the best financial options to improve their overall cloud operations.
- B . The IT, finance, and business departments rely on timely and relevant data to create customized FinOps frameworks and processes.
- C . The Finance team will evaluate FinOps team performance over a quarterly basis.
- D . The Finance team will evaluate FinOps team practices in the context of meeting business
objectives.
B
Explanation:
The Optimize Phase of the FinOps cycle provides teams the opportunity to analyze and implement optimal optimization infrastructure configuration and purchase practices. Costs for the exact same server type can vary greatly when targeting spot, on-demand, or reserved instances.
FinOps teams using data collected will balance operational requirements with the best financial options
to improve their overall cloud operations.
Optimization actions can include:
defining clear service level objectives (SLOs)
improving reserved instance coverage
right resources to match requirements
eliminate wasteful processes
automate scaling processes
FinOps as we likely learned requires a culture shift in how our organization addresses cloud spend.
Which of the following would be a true statement regarding the decision making in a FinOps organization? (Select One)
- A . The Cloud Cost Center of Excellence (CCoE) makes all decisions around cloud spending
- B . FinOps processes enable these teams to operate at high velocity while improving the profits of the company.
- C . Centralized decision making coupled with the move to variable spending in cloud allows technology teams to efficiently partner with finance and business teams to make informed decisions that drive continual optimization.
- D . Distributed decision making coupled with the move to variable spending in cloud allows technology teams to efficiently partner with finance and business teams to make informed decisions that drive
continual optimization.
D
Explanation:
This question can be a bit challenging since reading the documentation from the FinOps
Foundation some of these can get a bits obscure. This page provides the simplest decision making overview. FinOps What is?
In a FinOps based organization spending is a concern only for finance team and the FinOps team members. (True or False)
- A . False
- B . True
A
Explanation:
Spending is a concern for everyone, whether the finance team, engineering, production, etc.
Please review What is FinOps
In the world of FinOps the process of spreading out shared costs is iterative, and evolves over time. (True or False)
- A . False
- B . True
B
Explanation:
Iterative meaning that we will likely not get it totally correct right away. From dealing with shared services, poor tag management, containers, etc. We have to work at getting this process documented and setup in our environment. The process of spreading out shared costs is iterative, and evolves over time. The goal of splitting these costs is that products have a complete and holistic view of their actual running costs. As the process becomes more mature, confidence in the accuracy of the distribution should grow. Cost centers or teams should have a greater ability to be able to optimize or influence these shared costs.
Please review How do you know you’re on the right track? on this page Identifying Shared Costs
Should the FinOps team be a gatekeeper to cloud spending? (Select One)
- A . No
- B . Yes
A
Explanation:
The FinOps team is effectively a partner and not a direct manager. For example, if a cloud developer needs 10 Virtual Machines, development should be the gatekeeper and not FinOps teams. Instead of a focus on centralizing spend approvals, the FinOps teams should be focused on building
visibility of the spend to the appropriate areas to create accountability for each business unit.
Your FinOps lead has requested all cloud expenses and would like to understand all costs realized and paid for this quarter.
What type of expense would consider this? (Select One)
- A . Costs of Goods Sold (COGS)
- B . Weighted Average Cost of Capital (WACC)
- C . Capital Expenditure (CAPEX)
- D . Operational Expenditure (OPEX)
D
Explanation:
When you capitalize something, it becomes an asset of the company, whether or not it gets expensed within a specific period (CAPEX). If it benefits only the current period, then it’s an expense that is expended in this period with no future benefit, making it an operational expense (OPEX). Capitalization causes total outlays to differ from expenses in a similar period, with the delta being that which is capitalized.
Which of the following is an open source container management platform that we use in the cloud routinely? (Select One)
- A . Terraform
- B . Kubernetes
- C . Linux
- D . Windows
B
Explanation:
Kubernetes is an open source
Please reference this page before the exam. Calculating container costs
And if your not familiar with Kubernetes Kubernetes
Distributed decision making coupled with the move to variable spending in cloud allows technology teams to efficiently partner with finance and business teams to make informed decisions that drive continual optimization. (True or False)
- A . False
- B . True
B
Explanation:
Statement is correct. Remember that FinOps is really about collaboration. Please review the following
page FinOps What is?
Which of the following methods would we use if we wanted to ensure ‘a user defined coefficient’ ? (Select One)
- A . Target Split
- B . Fixed
- C . Even Split
- D . Proportional
A
Explanation:
There are typically three ways to split up shared costs:
Proportional: Based on relative percentage of direct costs
Even split: Split total amount evenly across targets
Fixed: User-defined coefficient (the sum of coefficients needs to be 100%)
This page here is perhaps one of the most important pages to review and understand before the exam. Identifying Shared Costs
There are effectively two ‘levers’ that are used to reduce costs in cloud computing.
What are they? (Select Two)
- A . Restructuring Costs
- B . Mitigating Costs
- C . Avoiding Costs
- D . Reducing Costs
C,D
Explanation:
There are two levers. 1.Reduce what you use and we call this avoiding costs 2. Pay less for what you use and we call this rate reduction
Which of the following are some common reasons it can be harder to bill and report on Kubernetes costs? (Select Two)
- A . Kubernetes clusters are never shared with applications run by any number of teams
- B . Containerized environments are much more dynamic than non-containerized ones
- C . One-to-one mappings of tags to specific teams do not allows cover some of the complex use cases that container utilization can create.
- D . Containerized environments are less dynamic than non-containerized ones
B,C
Explanation:
Containerized environments are much more dynamic, frequently shared between business units, lightweight and can moved frequently. Most cloud platforms allow customers to leverage the ability to turn off and on container deployments. These are just some of the reasons. Want to know more about Kubernetes? Kubernetes The Basics
Which of the following would be the correct description of what a ‘cluster’ is in Kubernetes? (Select One)
- A . A template of services to be ran in Kubernetes
- B . A group of server instances, managed by container orchestration.
- C . A template of a container with the software that needs to be run.
- D . An instance of a container image
B
Explanation:
There are a number of terms for Kubernetes that we need to be aware for the exam. It can be challenging at first to confuse a cluster, pod, service, image, namespace, etc. Please review the table here Container Costs
Which of the following methods would we use if we wanted to ensure ‘a user defined coefficient’? (Select One)
- A . Fixed
- B . Proportional
- C . Even Split
- D . Indirect
B
Explanation:
There are typically three ways to split up shared costs:
Proportional: Based on relative percentage of direct costs
Even split: Split total amount evenly across targets
Fixed: User-defined coefficient (the sum of coefficients needs to be 100%)
This page here is perhaps one of the most important pages to review and understand before the exam. Identifying Shared Costs
When proposing the adoption of a FinOps function within an organization, there will be a need to brief a variety of personas among the executive team to gain approval, buy-in, and involvement in conducting FinOps and achieving its goals. Every role has a clearly documented Primary Goal.
What is the primary
goal for a Chief Technology Officer (CTO)? (Select One)
- A . Quickly bring new products and features to market with an accurate price point.
- B . Deliver faster and high quality services to the organization, whilst maintaining business as usual
- C . Cloud platform relationship management
- D . Leverage technology to give the business a market and competitive advantage
D
Explanation:
There are clearly labeled roles for each ‘Persona’ and we must learn these for the exam. FinOps Personas
What is the name of the resource you would look at to identify the full list of the columns that can appear in AWS Cost and Usage Reports (AWS CUR) and the services that the columns apply to? (Select One)
- A . Data Dictionary
- B . S3 Repository
- C . Organization Resource
- D . Billing Statement
A
Explanation:
You can analyze your usage and cost in detail once you’ve set up your report. AWS has provided a Data Dictionary that lists the columns you’ll see in your report, along with definitions and examples.
To see line item definitions, see the Data dictionary.
What would be some common names that could used for a FinOps team? (Select Three)
- A . Cloud Economics Team
- B . Cloud Support Office
- C . Cloud Center of Excellence
- D . Cloud Business Office
- E . Chief Information Office
A,C,D
Explanation:
A FinOps team may have different names in difference organizations. Here are some examples.
1) Cloud Business Office (CBO)
2) Cloud Economics Team
3) Cloud Center of Excellence
Which of the following terms are associated with Agile? (Select Two)
- A . Zones
- B . Rightsizing
- C . Subscriptions
- D . User Story
- E . Sprint
D,E
Explanation:
There are several terms affiliated with Agile development such as Sprint, User Story, Epics, Lean, etc. Rightsizing, Zones and Regions are cloud computing terms. Sprint a short interval of work in an Agile project, usually a week or two weeks but sometimes more or less, during which time an agreed-upon amount of work will be delivered User Story in Agile, user stories typically illustrate a desire or requirement for the software to fulfill.
Please review the Terminology page before the exam. https://www.finops.org/resources/terminology/
In FinOps decisions are driven by the business value of the cloud? True or False?
- A . False
- B . True
B
Explanation:
Cloud has been commonly looked to a ‘Cost Center’. With FinOps we look at the cloud as a business value creator. One of the main roles of FinOps is to maximize the value of the cloud spending. Reference EdX Course Course /Chapter 1.
What Is FinOps? /FinOps Principles
FinOps Practitioners use ___________________________ to provide insight into how well an organization is doing with cloud spend. (Select One)
- A . Cloud Performance Benchmarking
- B . Cloud Networking Reports
- C . Cloud Billing Reports
- D . Cloud Tools
A
Explanation:
Benchmarking is important because it provides a reference to measure against. There are both internal and external benchmarks to consider as well. Reference Edx Course.
https://learning.edx.org/course/course-v1:LinuxFoundationX+LFS175x+2T2020/home
Which of the following is the best definition of a Kubernetes Pod? (Select One)
- A . A pod consists of a group of nodes and treats them as multiple blocks of resources that can be scheduled and scaled on the nodes.
- B . A pod consists of a group of nodes and treats them as a single block of resources that can be scheduled and scaled on the cluster.
- C . A pod consists of a group of containers and treats them as a single block of resources that can be scheduled and scaled on the cluster.
- D . A pod consists of a group of containers and treats them as multiple blocks of resources that can be
scheduled and scaled on the nodes.
C
Explanation:
The other answers are incorrect and are variations of the correct answer. Please review the terminology here for containers. .https://www.finops.org/projects/calculating-container-costs/
When proposing the adoption of a FinOps function within an organization, there will be a need to brief a variety of personas among the executive team to gain approval, buy-in, and involvement in conducting FinOps and achieving its goals. Every role has a clearly documented Primary Goal.
What is the primary goal for a Chief Technology Officer (CTO)? (Select One)
- A . Leverage technology to give the business a market and competitive advantage
- B . Deliver faster and high quality services to the organization, whilst maintaining business as usual
- C . Quickly bring new products and features to market with an accurate price point.
- D . Drive best practices into the organization through education, standardization, and cheerleading
A
Explanation:
There are clearly labeled roles for each ‘Persona’ and we must learn these for the exam. FinOps Personas
When proposing the adoption of a FinOps function within an organization, there will be a need to brief a variety of personas among the executive team to gain approval, buy-in, and involvement in conducting FinOps and achieving its goals. Every role has a clearly documented Primary Goal.
What is the primary goal for the Engineering Lead? (Select One)
- A . Deliver faster and high quality services to the organization, whilst maintaining business as usual
- B . Accurately budget, forecast and report cloud costs
- C . Leverage technology to give the business a market and competitive advantage
- D . Quickly bring new products and features to market with an accurate price point.
A
Explanation:
There are clearly labeled roles for each ‘Persona’ and we must learn these for the exam. FinOps Personas
What is the name of the file format used in AWS Cost and Usage reports? (Select One)
- A . CAR
- B . DBR
- C . CUR
- D . CSV
D
Explanation:
The AWS Cost and Usage Reports (AWS CUR) contains the most comprehensive set of
cost and usage data available.
https://docs.aws.amazon.com/cur/latest/userguide/what-is-cur.html
‘Manage Commitment Based Discounts’ would be under what domain according to the FinOps Foundation? (Select One)
- A . Cloud Usage Optimization
- B . Performance Tracking and Benchmarking
- C . Cloud Rate Optimization
- D . Organizational Alignment
C
Explanation:
There are six specific domains in FinOps according to the FinOps Foundation. We will want to be able to understand what topics are covered by each domain. The FinOps Foundation has put out an excellent downloadable poster that we should use as a study aid. https://www.finops.org/img//resources/FinOps%20Poster_011021.pdf
FinOps Principles are north stars that guide the activities of our FinOps practice. They’re developed by FinOps Foundation members, and honed through experience.
When it comes to the FinOps principle of ‘A centralized team drives FinOps’ which of the following statements would be true? (Select Two)
- A . Centralized discount buying process removes rate negotiations from engineering team consideration
- B . Centrally govern and control Committed Use Discounts, Reserved Instances, and Volume/Custom Discounts with Cloud Providers
- C . Track team-level targets to drive accountability
- D . Never use granular allocation of all costs, direct or shared, to the teams and cost centers responsible for them
A,B
Explanation:
Using a granular approach is recommended and Track team-level targets to drive accountability is not under the A centralized team section, it is under ‘Everyone takes ownership for their cloud usage’
Please review this page before the exam. https://www.finops.org/framework/principles/
When comparing TBM and FinOps, which one would focus on results mainly on speed? (Select One)
- A . FinOps
- B . TBM
A
Explanation:
FinOps is focused on results much more frequently than with TBM. TBM is monthly or quarterly focused whereas FinOps collects and reviews data constantly.
Which of the following is NOT part of the FinOps Maturity Model? (Select One)
- A . Crawl
- B . Walk
- C . Sprint
- D . Run
C
Explanation:
Explanation. A “Crawl, Walk, Run” approach to performing FinOps enables organizations to start small, and grow in scale, scope and complexity as business value warrants maturing a functional activity. Taking quick action at a small scale and limited scope allows FinOps teams to assess the outcomes of their actions, and to gain insights into the value of taking further action in a larger, faster, or more granular way.
Please review this page before the exam. https://www.finops.org/framework/maturity-model/
Which are the correct FinOps Principles? (Select Six)
- A . A centralized team drives FinOps
- B . Engineering is solely responsible for cloud usage
- C . FinOps reports should be accessible and timely
- D . Teams need to collaborate
- E . Everyone takes ownership of cloud usage
- F . Take advantage of the variable cost model of the cloud
- G . Business Value of cloud drive decisions
- H . All decisions are centralized thru finance
A,C,D,E,F,G
Explanation:
Correct Answers
1) Teams need to collaborate
2) Business value of cloud drives decisions
3) Everyone takes ownership of cloud usage
4) FinOps reports should be accessible and timely
5) A centralized team drives FinOps
6) Take advantage of the variable cost model of the cloud
Before the exam you must review this page! https://www.finops.org/framework/principles/
Which of the following a native tool in AWS that we would use in our FinOps exercises to understand costing issues, get recommendations, etc.
- A . Cost and Usage Reports
- B . Cost Explorer
- C . Trusted Advisor
B
Explanation:
Cost Explorer is a free tool that AWS offers to all customers that provides visibility across the AWS infrastructure and has features like rightsizing, savings plans recommendations, and cost anomaly alerting.
https://aws.amazon.com/aws-cost-management/aws-cost-explorer/
CUR provides no recommendations and it is important to that Trusted Advisor has free and paid support options but does not provide insight into billing.
Your organization has recently adopted a FinOps based method for dealing with cloud costs and adopting FinOps. Currently, your organization has recently completed ‘Step Two’ for FinOps culture in your company.
What would the next stage for the organization to accomplish? (Select One)
- A . Socializing FinOps for adoption in an organization
- B . Planning for FinOps in an Organization
- C . Enforcing mandates for cloud spend.
- D . Preparing the organization for FinOps
A
Explanation:
The next step after Stage 1 – Planning for FinOps in an Organization (Laying the groundwork) is the Stage 2 – Socializing FinOps for adoption in an organization. Then After Step 2 would be Stage 3 – Preparing the organization for FinOps
Please reference this page before the exam. Adopting FinOps
Your business unit has decided to use Azure for its cloud services for production. Other business units have been Azure for both development and production use cases. You have been asked to provide tools in Azure that can provide recommendations for reducing costs and getting insight into better ways of resource management.
What tools in Azure could you identify? (Select Two)
- A . Recommender
- B . Trusted Advisor
- C . Azure Advisor
- D . Azure has only one tool
CA
Explanation:
Every cloud provider has their own approach for billing and cost management. We need to know the three major providers in preparation for the exam. Please refer to this page for a handy table. Tools and Terms
FinOps Principles are north stars that guide the activities of our FinOps practice. These principles are clearly broken down and we must encourage members to practice these. When it comes to these principles which of the following activities would be under the ‘Teams need to Collaborate’ principle? (Select One)
- A . Rightsizing instances and services help drive appropriate resourcing levels
- B . Fast feedback loops result in more efficient behavior
- C . Define governance and controls for cloud usage
- D . Gain visibility into cloud spend at all levels
B
Explanation:
Honestly, some of these activities may or not intuitively seem like they are under specific principles. This is perhaps the most confusing part of the content to remember.
For Teams need to collaborate these are the activities specified by the FinOps Foundation:
Finance moves at the speed and granularity of IT
Engineering considers cost as a new efficiency metric
Continuously improve your practice to gain efficiency and innovation Define governance and controls for cloud usage
Please refer to this page before the exam. https://www.finops.org/framework/principles/
FinOps Principles gives us what are called___________________to help guide our activities in FinOps. (Select One)
- A . North Pole
- B . Guiding Lights
- C . Auroras
- D . North Stars
D
Explanation:
Reference https://www.finops.org/framework/principles/
FinOps Principles are north stars that guide the activities of our FinOps practice. They’re developed by FinOps Foundation members, and honed through experience. These were initially proposed as part of the writing the Cloud FinOps book in Sept 2019 as a joint AWS announcement at CloudyCon. Now, they cover multiple clouds, and knowing how cloud services change every quarter it seems, they may change slightly over time as new experience is gained by all.
These principles are in no particular order, and they should be taken as a whole. We encourage members to understand and practice all of these principles. Teams need to collaborate
Finance moves at the speed and granularity of IT
Engineering considers cost as a new efficiency metric
Continuously improve your practice to gain efficiency and innovation
Define governance and controls for cloud usage
Everyone takes ownership for their cloud usage
Empower feature and product teams to manage their own usage of cloud against their budget
Gain visibility into cloud spend at all levels
Track team-level targets to drive accountability
A centralized team drives FinOps
Centrally govern and control Committed Use Discounts, Reserved Instances, and Volume/Custom Discounts with Cloud Providers
Centralized discount buying process removes rate negotiations from engineering team consideration
Granular allocation of all costs, direct or shared, to the teams and cost centers responsible for them
Reports should be accessible and timely
Fast feedback loops result in more efficient behavior
Visibility helps determine if resources are under- or over-provisioned
Automation of resources drives continuous improvement
Decisions are driven by business value of cloud
Trending and variance analysis helps to understand why costs increased
Internal team benchmarking drives best practices and celebrates wins
Industry peer-level benchmarking determines how your company is performing
Take advantage of the variable cost model of the cloud.
Rightsizing instances and services help drive appropriate resourcing levels Comparing pricing between services and resource types drives better decisions