Cost Optimize Your IT Infrastructure In The Cloud & Minimize IT Wastage

 
Sairam J,  Director, Global Clouds Consultants, May 27,2021

One of our recent projects involved suggesting cloud cost optimization strategies to a mid-sized business owner. With the impressive benefits of AWS (Amazon Web Services), she had promptly opted for cloud migration. After all, high agility and scalability are beneficial aspects of cloud computing. However, the cloud bills she received gave her the shock of her life.

As such, she started to second-guess her decision to opt for cloud investments. She contacted me to aid her with the best practices to save money on excess cloud bills. To ensure that the best financial management practices for the cloud are implemented, it is vital to understand what cloud cost optimization is and then delve into the strategies.

What is cloud cost optimization?

In the most basic terms, cloud cost optimization is the result of using the best cloud financial management practices. These practices include the different ways that you can reduce cloud spending overall through the identification of mismanaged resources. Moreover, you can also remove waste resources and opt for the right sized cloud computing services. It is basically the strategic financial management of reducing cost without compromising on the delivery of exceptional results.

Strategies that can aid in improving cloud costs

There are various strategies that I can recommend for reducing cloud wastage. Check out some of these that are listed here.

     Network: 

Avoid inter-region data transfer costs: For this, you can place limitations on the outbound transfer of data. Moreover, you can also use Amazon CloudFront.

Co-locate your instances within the same Availability Zone (especially for testing and development): Using the AWS Cost Explorer can help in setting up the cost allocation tags. You can now use these tags like filters and combine them to develop a critical cost report. That can offer a detailed explanation regarding the data charges. 

 

 

Use private IP addresses for intra-availability zone data transfers: This can help in reducing the hidden data transfer costs. Using public IP can lead to more charges.

For resources in multiple regions or accounts, use VPC peering to optimize data transfer costs: Here, it is vital to note that running or setting up a VPC peering connection is free of cost. Irrespective of the Availability Zones, data transfer costs are $0.01/GB for receive and send.

     Compute:

Use Reserved instances: AWS RIs or AWS Reserved Instances are actually large discounts that are often given to enterprises on the basis of association time and upfront payment. You can attain RI savings of 75%.

Use AWS Compute Optimizer to look at instance type recommendations beyond downsizing within an instance family: The result is a reduction in the cloud bill to a great extent.

Use Spot instances: Attaining the unused EC2 or spot instance is much more favorable as it is cheaper than the on-demand costs.

 

 

Use Savings Plan: With this, you will have to agree to a basic compute spend each hour that you must pay regardless of the usage.

Verify use of serverless computing: The AWS Lambda can aid in reducing cloud costs significantly.

Avoid idle resources: It is vital to note despite not offering any value to the business, these idle resources absorb at least 10% of the total capacity of the CPU. Management of the resources and consolidating them is essential.

Use auto scaling groups to automate scale-in and scale-out on real time system dynamics: It can offer the number of resources you want and then scale it down for effective cost management after the completion of the goal.

     Storage:

Analyze S3 usage and reduce cost by leveraging lower cost storage tiers and object lifecycle policies: It provides access to different data levels, thereby optimizing the storage costs on your behalf.

Identify EBS volumes with low utilization and reduce cost by snapshotting then deleting them: Downgradation of the EBS blocks in case of low throughput can help in decreasing EBS costs.

Reduce cost by stopping RDS and pausing Redshift instances with low utilization: Using the Amazon Redshift console will suspend the compute yet retain the data underneath. Moreover, stopping RDS instances can lower the overall cloud costs.

Use services like AWS Trusted Advisor to under-utilized resources: With this, you can now have an assessment of all the AWS regions in the AWS infrastructure. The summary of the results will give you a brief idea.

 

Conclusion

After implementing these best practices into the business organization, we witnessed a steady decline of the cloud bills. While some of these practices may not be applicable to everyone, it is vital that you seek assistance from experts in order to get the best results.

To ensure high scalability, a high amount on cloud bills must not be the detrimental factor. Keep in mind that there is always space for more cost optimization. In order to attain the best results, you can also use AWS Support plans and seek out AWS cloud partners such as GlobalClouds Consultants.