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Six AWS Pillars for Cost Optimisation

CIO Review Europe | Tuesday, July 11, 2023

Cost optimisation is a business-focused, ongoing discipline to promote spending and expense reduction while maximising company value. 

FREMONT, CA: There are five AWS cost optimisation pillars to help reduce costs. Although the pillars are practical and easy to comprehend, some new users may find that they don't delve deeply enough into the whys and hows of cost optimisation, particularly when it comes to preserving the optimised state.  Experienced users of AWS will be aware of the five AWS cost optimisation pillars: rightsize, plan on/off times, adopt the appropriate price model, optimise storage, and repeat. The justifications for optimising AWS costs and then repeating the process won't be as familiar to those who have only recently started using the AWS Cloud.

1. Rightsizing AWS Instances

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Right-sizing AWS instances enables their capacities to match their workloads, ensuring that the company only pays for what it needs. The most frequent assets to rightsize for companies just starting with AWS are EC2 instances and RDS instances, and the best method to optimise these instances is to use Amazon Cloudwatch to track CPU usage, network throughput, and disc I&O. AWS instances have capacities that increase with size and decrease with size, respectively. As a result, individuals can only downsize to a less expensive instance if utilisation metrics are peaking at 45 per cent or less. If there are too many instances running manually to monitor utilisation, AWS recommends using CloudHealth.

2. Scheduling On/Off Times

Not every item installed on AWS needs to run continually. When the developers leave for the evening, it makes no sense to keep running some of the EC2 instances that are used for development, testing, staging, and quality assurance. Although historically this hasn't been the most dependable method to achieve AWS cost optimisation, individuals can ask developers to make sure they manually turn off non-production assets. AWS suggests scheduling on/off periods for non-production, indicating they can be turned off for as much as 70 per cent of the week, as its second AWS cost optimisation pillar. Using a service like CloudHealth to track utilisation metrics will probably show that applying more aggressive schedules to achieve grander savings.

3. Reserved Instances

The majority of organisations are aware that they may use AWS Reserved Instances to take advantage of reductions of up to 75 per cent compared to on-demand pricing by committing to a level of service over one or three years. If Reserved Instances are managed effectively, they can make a considerable contribution to AWS cost optimisation for predictable workloads. Some companies commit to a reserved instance but fail to fully utilise the cost savings as a result of decreased demand, or a reservation-related instance is terminated but not replaced.

4. Optimise Storage

Due to the focus on instances in AWS cost optimisation procedures, storage is often overlooked. Despite this, significant savings can be made by allocating the proper storage type to assets and keeping rarely accessed data in lower-tier storage options. However, it's critical to consider retrieval costs before transferring rarely accessed data to cold storage.

General purpose SSD storage is the default storage type that AWS gives assets when it comes to storage. Utilising throughput-optimised HDD storage can cut storage costs in half when a high level of performance and availability is not required, such as for non-production instances. 

5. Repeat

Cost optimisation for AWS is a continuous process. It is vital to approach AWS cost optimisation as an ongoing task as businesses extend their cloud presence, asset utilisation rises or falls, and Reserved Instances approach the end of their useful lives. To ensure that the full economic potential of the AWS Cloud is realised, AWS provides four strategies to continuously measure, monitor, and improve:

• Create and implement cost allocation tags.

• Define metrics, establish goals, and evaluate.

• To reduce costs, train and reward teams.

• Give a person or group the responsibility for AWS cost optimisation.

6. Delete Zombie Assets

Assets identified as zombie assets are no longer in use or were launched concurrently with another object, such as an EC2 instance, but were not removed when the EC2 instance was terminated. Although it's not always due to poor housekeeping, some businesses can discover thousands of zombie assets in their inventories that are still being paid for even though they aren't being used.

Elastic block storage is one example of an asset that is frequently attached by default to an EC2 instance. However, unless the box on the AWS dashboard is selected to destroy the storage volume when the instance is terminated, it stays running and accruing fees. Elastic IP addresses, Elastic Load Balancers, outdated snapshots, and elements of enabled instances are examples of further zombie assets.

It is challenging to continuously monitor the AWS Cloud for assets that can be scheduled, terminated, or rightsized. As a result, many companies use policy-driven automation to monitor their AWS Cloud and notify them of possibilities to reduce costs. The process of automating AWS cost optimisation is simple. Furthermore, optimising AWS costs can be accomplished by establishing a cloud financial management practice. Cloud Financial Management (CFM), also known as FinOps or cloud cost management, is a function that aids in establishing guardrails to reach financial targets, aligning and developing financial goals, and promoting a cost-conscious culture.

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