Written by – Manish Juneja
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 AWS customers’ most common problems. An unexpected amount, typically thousands of dollars, can make a hole in your pocket.
The next question immediately comes to mind: “How to reduce the soaring AWS cost responsibly without compromising on business needs?”
A few basic steps must be assessed to save from high AWS bills. Observing these patterns, generally witnessed across industries regarding cloud bills, is important. AWS provides default reports that help businesses visualize costs and usage at a high level. Choosing the hourly filter along with resources makes it 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 backup and 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 still uses snapshots, it may be smart to conduct an internal audit, gather only the required snapshots, and delete the redundant ones. Once the initial audit is complete, you can check for other modern backup capabilities built into AWS and remove 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. Businesses must sit back and analyze if all the services they have opted for are making sense and keep a close check on the overall spending dedicated to AWS management. Cutting unnecessary services, checking for redundancies, and investing in certain AWS services may be the need of the hour. Regardless, it is essential to conduct periodic checks to see if the spending on AWS services is strategic.
3. NAT Gateways
NAT gateways enable transitioning of data between AWS regions. If the data repeatedly transitions between different AWS regions, it’s time to check the NAT gateway data transfer costs. If this exceeds 10% of your AWS Bill, check for these costs in detail and assess if they are reasonable and worth the spend. If you are operating a high-traffic website, the costs might be understandable, but if you are running an average application, it’s time to sit back and analyze how much a spend is worth. AWS also guides NAT gateway optimization from time to time.
4. Stay Updated with Latest Compute
Many businesses face the brunt of outdated computing and are left with a huge technical debt. Moving forward with old product families will only cause more harm, although it may not seem a matter of concern. With new product families being introduced occasionally, it ensures the application performs better and costs less than the legacy approach. To move to a new family, new script updates might be necessary and help improve performance and save money on AWS cloud. Keeping a close eye and noting anytime the spending goes above 10% for a given account, it’s time to analyze and upgrade to new product families.The best way to curb accidental spending on AWS is by achieving full visibility regarding live cloud costs. Costs can be curbed even through real-time anomaly detection. Teams can improve cost optimization with access to AWS optimization tools and the right data at the right time. The more proactive businesses monitor AWS spending, the fewer surprises will be in store when receiving the monthly bill.
AWS offers several services, pricing options, and flexibility that helps manage costs effectively. It allows you to keep your business performance high and optimize costs simultaneously. Monitoring the AWS costs, analyzing data to find gaps, and taking 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 while optimizing costs.
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, will help you optimize your AWS bills and environment if your businesses need AWS assistance. To know how to optimize AWS costs quickly, contact Team Rapyder today.
