Taking Cloud Cost Optimization Beyond the Basics
When it comes to the cloud, the excitement of innovation and process improvement can quickly give way to the less-glamorous business of cost optimization. Once your cloud migration is complete and setup is finalized, you may get questions from your CFO about where exactly this cloud management money is going. Then, you may be asked something to the effect of, “What are we doing to reduce costs as we scale?”
It’s no secret: Cloud operations can be an expensive undertaking. No matter who you partner with, they’ll play an important role in ensuring your ongoing AWS service costs stay manageable.
A Quick Cost Breakdown
Amazon bases its billing on the services you use: compute, data transfer, and storage are all billed based on their own usage metrics including gigabytes of storage or hourly compute. You can also select your pricing model on AWS, whether you’d prefer to pay as you go or reserve the services you know you’ll use.
We can help you understand these pricing structures and what will work best for your organization, but that’s only the tip of the iceberg. From there, the opportunities for cost optimization become more specialized. AWS does offer its own Cost Optimization Hub to go a little further, but drilling down into the details can be a complicated process.
Considering costs but haven’t kicked off your cloud migration? Select a partner like JetSweep who bakes cost-optimization in from the start.
3 Insider Tips to Cost Optimization
Many approaches to cost optimization are tried-and-true, and you might be able to find many of them with a quick Google search. Of course you want to right-size your cloud solution and have a spend commitment, as these tactics are a crucial cost-saving foundation, but tenured cloud experts will be able to reveal more nuanced and uncommon approaches. (That’s us, by the way.)
Let me give you three examples as a demonstration of the lesser-known approaches to cost management on the cloud.
1. Leverage Linux
Running the .NET framework for your development environment likely incurs some big spending on Microsoft licenses. But those in the know can guide you to run .NET on Linux instead, helping you avoid unnecessary, ongoing expenses. This approach may not top the list of cost-optimization approaches, but granular solutions like this can add up to more significant savings for your organization.
2. Get in the Zone
When you set up AWS, you have the option to select your availability zones based on the physical location of servers. Your choice determines your data transfer costs, as moving across zones can result in higher charges. You might think to yourself, “Well, if transfer across zones costs more, I’ll just select the same zone for each server.” But AWS’s availability zone designations, such as us-east-1a, are not the same physical location each time. Amazon randomizes the naming, so you have to look at the actual zone ID of the availability zones to avoid paying transfer costs across your AWS environment.
3. Set Guardrails
When you select your server size, think about it as a container. Even if you don’t intend to fill it up and pay for all the compute power it could hold, that doesn’t mean it won’t happen. One of your developers could select it for software testing, then keep their program running (and your bill rising). A hacker could access your server and enjoy access to that additional processing power.
Setting a limit on your server size will help mitigate these potentially expensive outcomes. Cost optimization is not only to protect you from the expenses incurred by your team, it’s also to protect your organization from bad actors. There are many other possible cost optimization guardrails available to implement as well.
I would not begrudge you if you felt these details were a little too inside-baseball. But taking these steps is how we work to ensure your costs are optimized beyond the surface-level solutions some other cloud partners may provide.
Should You Try DIY?
You have the option to try and build your own cost-optimization strategy and implement it within your cloud environment — the information is out there for you. But, as I’ve outlined here, these cost-saving measures are not always obvious. Consider these factors that may affect your own attempts to optimize costs:
- AWS services can change quickly, and when they do, new cost optimization tactics are required.
- Cost reduction is an ongoing journey, not just a one-time assessment. This can be a time-consuming undertaking long term.
- Working with a partner allows for knowledge sharing and creating proactive solutions as opposed to reacting after the fact.
If you remain undaunted, consider exploring these resources to put together your do-it-yourself approach:
- Free AWS training on cost optimization
- AWS Cost Management Ramp Up Guide
- AWS Compute Optimizer, which provides right-sizing recommendations
- A guide on how to start and stop non-critical EC2 instances
Tackling AWS Cloud Costs
No matter where you are in your cloud migration or management, we’re ready to see where we can help reduce your costs. Our best practice analysis can help ensure your setup meets industry standards while maintaining a cost-optimized focus. And if you give the DIY approach a shot, we’re always available to help you take the next step.