The study says, 50-to-80% of cloud bill comes in the form of Instances or Virtual Machine. And this cost can be minimized up to 40% if proper resource management strategy is followed.
Most of the companies while choosing the Instances (or VMs) considers the maximum expected load their infrastructure may subject to. In on-premise IT modal this approach is ideal because their hardware cannot be instantly upgraded according to load. But when it comes to cloud computing this is not the case. And this is what which makes cloud computing interesting. Here the infrastructure resources can be automatically and instantaneously scaled (both expand and shrink) depending upon the need. So while choosing the instances in cloud computing the clients need to understand their infrastructure are not going to need all resources all the time. And that is why they should plan resource management strategy accordingly to cut-down their expenses on the cloud.
So let’s discuss some common Cost Optimization Strategies for Compute Instances to save unnecessary expenses on Instances in cloud bill.
Cost Optimization Strategies for Compute Instances
Identifying Untapped Instances:
Selecting instances according to maximum expected load on the network is one of the key reason causing high instance bill to the clients. It needs to understand, generally, not all instances are used at the same time. So it is important to identify idle (unused) instance in the process and turn them off. Say for example you have created ‘n’ number of instances where the cost of one instance is 0.2 dollar per hour. And during the certain time period in a day, you have used only n-2 instances. If this happens one day for 5 hours the loss will 2 dollars (2*(0.2*5)) per day. But if this happens with more number of instances for more numbers of hours in a month, in that case, the loss will be higher. So turning them off will avoid the billing of your unused instances and save you from paying for them.
Search for Higher Discount:
Cloud providers offer a high percentage of discounts if a client promises to use their service for the long run. So before selecting the instances do a proper research and select the most appropriate package.
For example, AWS on its EC2 Reserved Instances (RI) provides the maximum of 75% discount than comparing with its on-demand instances. There are three different categories of RIs standard RIs, Convertible RIs, and Scheduled RIs. And the discounts offered to them by AWS are also different.
EC2 Reserved Instances provides per hour billing with an optional capacity reservation on EC2 instances. When the attributes of EC2 instances matches attributes of active RIs, AWS billing automatically applies the discounted rates. You can also get a discount by choosing region scoped RIs.
Use AWS Spot:
AWS spot instance allows to you in optimizing the cost and helps in scaling the throughput of your applications around ten times. Here you pay the spot price in effect for the time period your instances are running. According to Amazon, AWS Spot instances allows users to save up to 90% comparing with on-Demand prices. AWS provides a tool called Spot Instant Advisor to compare the pricing of spot Instance against On-Demand rates.
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