Managing cloud costs can often feel like trying to catch a cloud. One moment, you’re smoothly navigating the cloud computing atmosphere, leveraging the scalability and flexibility provided by your cloud service provider, and the next, you’re left pondering the additional costs that have suddenly appeared on your bill.
Yes, there are numerous articles suggesting straightforward advice like “set budget alerts” or “delete unused instances.” While that’s not bad advice, it doesn’t quite cut it when it comes to serious cloud cost management. To really get a handle on those cloud computing costs, we need to go beyond the usual and delve into some advanced tips.
1. Nat Gateway Endpoints (Usage) vs Traffic (Transfer)
When you provision a NAT Gateway, you are charged for each hour that your NAT Gateway is available and each gigabyte of data that it processes. For high availability and fault tolerance in your cloud environment, it’s a smart move to deploy a NAT Gateway in each Availability Zone (AZ). However, deploying multiple ones in the same VPC can lead to unnecessary costs. Regularly reviewing your NAT Gateways and Regional Data Transfer can help you identify cost-saving opportunities.
2. Use For Free: S3 and DaynmoDB Endpoints
Gateway VPC endpoints provide reliable connectivity to Amazon S3 and DynamoDB without requiring an internet gateway or a NAT device for your VPC. Unlike other types of VPC endpoints, gateway endpoints do not use AWS PrivateLink and come at no additional charge. Both Amazon S3 and DynamoDB support gateway endpoints and interface endpoints, offering cost-effective connectivity options. Utilize gateway endpoints for S3 and DynamoDB to reduce costs associated with internet gateways or NAT devices.
3. RDS Aurora I/O Optimized – A Performance Boost
The I/O Optimized configuration might appear to elevate your cloud computing expenses initially, yet careful planning can unveil its advantages for specific usage patterns. AWS Aurora I/O-Optimized entails no charges for read and write I/O but entails elevated costs for computing and storage.
This configuration can yield up to 40% cost savings for I/O-intensive applications, particularly when I/O charges surpass 25% of the total Aurora database expenditure. However, it’s imperative to consistently evaluate your specific requirements before implementing any configuration alterations to guarantee cost-effectiveness.
4. RDS IOPS Changes – Fine-tuning the Provision
IOPS (Input/Output Operations Per Second) plays a critical role in shaping your cloud costs and the performance of RDS instances. Fine-tuning IOPS can improve database performance but may increase AWS cloud costs. Keeping a keen eye on your database workload and adjusting IOPS when necessary can help in cost saving.
5. The Lone Trail: CloudTrail
With cloud computing services like CloudTrail, remember a simple mantra: one account, one trail. More than one trail per account can quickly add up to additional costs and wouldn’t be necessary if they are both tracking the same events. Plus, setting up a retention policy can ensure that you don’t retain logs longer than necessary. Note that by default, CloudTrail retains logs for the last 90 days.
6. The Invisible Charges: EBS Hidden Cost
EBS has a sneaky way of accumulating additional costs with volumes left attached to stopped EC2 instances, a common occurrence in AWS cloud computing services. This situation can be likened to leaving the light on in an unused room—it’s unnecessarily consuming resources and adding to your bill. The solution? Delete these volumes or create snapshots for later use. This small step in cloud cost optimization can make a big difference in your overall cloud costs.
7. Archive it: EC2 Archived Snapshot
Archiving snapshots can be a significant cost-saving measure. Archived snapshots are approximately 75% cheaper than standard ones, making them an attractive option for long-term storage of backup data. However, it’s important to note that restoring an archived snapshot can take up to 72 hours. This delay necessitates careful planning to ensure that archived snapshots are only used for data that is not needed immediately. Regularly review and archive infrequently accessed snapshots to optimize your storage costs.
8. S3 Versioning / Multipart Upload – Striking a Balance
S3 versioning is a valuable feature for data protection and recovery. However, it can quickly lead to increased storage consumption, as every change creates a new version. This not only leads to additional costs but can also complicate your cloud environment by cluttering it with numerous object versions. Implement lifecycle policies that automatically delete or archive older versions after a defined period. You can also use lifecycle policies to clean up incomplete multipart uploads automatically.
9. Don’t “Backup” into Extra Costs
Overdoing backups can lead to significant additional costs. Consider reducing your retention policy and shifting your snapshots from RDS to AWS Backup or S3 Glacier. AWS Backup provides a centralized, automated, and cost-efficient way to manage backups across AWS services, while S3 Glacier offers a low-cost option for long-term storage.
10. Say “Yes” to Commitments
Long-term usage commitments with your cloud service provider can lead to substantial discounts, making them a key component of an effective cloud cost management strategy. Services like Amazon EC2, RDS, DynamoDB, and ElastiCache offer options for Reserved Instances or Savings Plans, which provide significant savings over on-demand pricing.
If your usage patterns are consistent, it’s a smart step in your cloud cost management strategy. Aim to cover 70-80% of your consistent usage; this balance helps you achieve significant cost savings while maintaining flexibility for variable workloads.
And there you have it—our top 10 advanced tips to demystify your cloud costs. The cloud landscape is as diverse as it is expansive, and each organization’s use case is unique. This brings us to a simple truth—the most effective cloud cost management strategy is the one that’s tailored to your specific needs.
With careful planning and over a decade of experience with leading providers of cloud computing services like Google Cloud and AWS Cloud, we can help sculpt a cloud cost management strategy that’s just right for you.
Don’t let your journey in the cloud be clouded by complex pricing structures and models. Reach out to us today, and let’s make sure your next step in the cloud, or even your next cloud migration, is a confident and cost-effective one!
