Moving your business to cloud seems the right way to move forward. However, the first challenge that most people encounter when they migrate to cloud is the high cost of Amazon Web Services (AWS) if that’s your choice of cloud. The “Bad AWS Billing Surprise” is one of the most common problems faced by AWS customers. A totally unexpected amount of money, typically thousands of dollars can make a hole in your pocket.
The seemingly next question that immediately comes to mind is, “How to reduce the soaring AWS cost in a responsible manner, without compromising on business needs?”
There are a few basic steps to be assessed to save from high AWS bills. It’s important to observe these patterns which are generally witnessed across industries when it comes to cloud bills. AWS provides default reports that helps businesses visualize costs as well as usage at a high level. By choosing the hourly filter along with resources, it’s easier to identify the top resources incurring costs. Apart from these, here are five ways to save AWS costs which can be fixed by engineers or other team members of the tech team.
5 things you can do today to reduce AWS costs
1. Overuse of AWS Snapshots :
AWS Snapshots were most commonly used for data back up as well as archiving. This was before AWS introduced automated backup and restore features. In the ancient legacy architecture, it was common for tech teams to unintentionally spend almost 20% of their cloud bills on snapshots. Most engineers tend to back up everything, but it’s imperative to understand that not everything requires a backup. If your business is still using snapshots, it may be smart to conduct an internal audit and gather only required snapshots and delete the redundant ones. Once the initial audit is complete, you can check for other modern back up capabilities that are built into AWS and get rid of snapshots permanently.
2. Expensive Overhead AWS Management Services
AWS CloudWatch, AWS CloudTrail, AWS Config, AWS X-ray – many services fall under one umbrella of AWS Management Services. It is necessary for businesses to sit back and analyze if all the services that they have opted is making sense and keep a close check on the overall spend dedicated to AWS management. Cutting down on unnecessary services, checking for any redundancies and investing in certain AWS services may be the need of the hour. Regardless, it is essential to conduct periodical checks to see if the spend on AWS services is strategic.
3. NAT Gateways
NAT gateways enable transitioning of data between AWS regions. If the data is repeatedly transitioning between different AWS regions, it’s time to check the NAT gateway data transfer costs. If this exceeds beyond 10% your AWS Bill, then check for these costs in detail and assess if they are worth the spend and are reasonable. If you are operating a high-traffic website, then the costs might be understandable, but if you are running an average application, then it’s time to sit back and analyze how much of a spend is worth. AWS also provides guidance on NAT gateway optimization from time to time.
4. Stay Updated with Latest Compute
Many businesses face the brunt with outdated compute and are left with a huge technical debt. Moving forward with old, product families will only cause more harm although it may seem as not a matter of concern. With new product families being introduced from time to time, it ensures to make the application perform better and cost less than the legacy approach. To move to new family, new script updates might be necessary and helps improve performance and save money on AWS cloud. Keeping a close eye and noting anytime if the spends go above 10% for a given account, then it’s time to analyze and upgrade to new product families.
5. Cloud Transparency
The best way to curb accidental spending on AWS is by achieving full visibility in terms of live cloud costs. Costs can be curbed even through real-time anomaly detection. Teams can improve costs optimization with the access to AWS optimization tools and by having access to right data at the right time. The more proactive businesses are when it comes to monitoring AWS spends, the less surprises will be in store when they receive the AWS monthly bill.
AWS offers several services and pricing options along with flexibility that helps manage costs effectively. It allows to keep your business performance high and optimize costs at the same time. Monitoring the AWS costs and analyzing data to find gaps and take necessary action to save costs by following a tactical approach is the need of the hour. The tactical approach must involve keeping user demands in mind whilst optimizing costs.
Rapyder, a leading AWS consulting partner, is here to help you optimize your AWS bills and optimize your AWS environment if your businesses need AWS assistance. To know how to quickly optimize AWS costs, contact Team Rapyder today.
Written by – Manish Juneja
