How To Reduce My AWS Costs: The Ultimate Guide

Amazon’s Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) service can be your company’s best friend and your accountant’s worst enemy – at the same time. How can you keep your bottom line happy while satisfying the needs of both?

Amazon is taking over the world! Not in the form of a “robot riot” or artificial intelligence (AI) manipulation, but in the sense that Amazon has something for everyone. Consumers are well aware of Amazon Prime, but the much larger side of Amazon’s business model is their Amazon Web Services (AWS), an on-demand cloud computing platform. AWS is an all-in-one solution with a fee structure based on usage/consumption, features, and user options selected, with a product and service line-up that has a solution for just about every imaginable need.

Not only does AWS have something for everyone, but AWS also has “everyone” for a customer. Until recently, AWS boasted owning more than a third of the cloud computing market share. Dominating an industry takes far more than luck, but a solid basis of expertise. Amazon can also promise one of the most secure environments to deliver on their promise of safeguarding information.

The subscription-based AWS tiers include an array of data storage, IT applications, and resources. Users pay for what is accessed and can adjust tiers based on needs. Sounds like a straight-forward process that’s easy to manage, right? That’s true, to an extent. New AWS subscribers often report that programmers and developers love their “new toy”, with all the productivity and flexibility AWS offers – until users exceed allotments and go over budget. Managing expectations, hours, and resources is a delicate balance, and finding ways to balance usage hours with AWS costs is a challenge many subscribers face. How can AWS users stay within budget parameters for projects without limiting resources?

The fine line to walk

eSOZO, trusted cloud services partner and managed IT services provider in New Jersey, has helpful tips and guidance to balance your needs with your usage to monitor costs and stay within your budget. The team of AWS experts at eSOZO can audit your business’ AWS installations and help your business to compress your monthly costs.

• Amazon CloudWatch
  • Amazon CloudWatch monitors AWS cloud resources and usage and allows users to set up a billing alarm based on an amount the user sets, and users are notified when the usage reaches the threshold.
  • TIP: Set the alarm’s dollar amount based on CloudWatch reports for your most recent previous month’s expenses that reflect average usage.
  • TIP: Take advantage of Amazon CloudWatch email notifications, so an alert is delivered to your inbox for immediate attention.

• AWS Reserved Instances
  • Use AWS Reserved Instances to lower those resources you’re using already by selecting a lower effective rate for one or three years rather than the price users would pay for on-demand resources.
  • TIP: A three-year Reserved Instance is a significant cost saving compared to the cost of on-demand or three one-year reservations.

• Spot Instances
  • Spot instances allow users access to increased Amazon EC2 capacity at a saving.
  • TIP: Users can typically save up to 75% on Spot instances versus on-demand prices.
  • TIP: How do users purchase Spot Instances? Users specify an hourly rate in a bidding process, and as such Spot instances are not recommended for real-time resources.

• Auto Scaling
  • Adjust your instances in AWS EC2 based on traffic volume or other conditions. This way, your business can be certain a project is successful factoring impacts like significant traffic growth and avoid wasting money on idle capacities.

• Botmetric
  • Botmetric is a fantastic web tool built into AWS Cloud that helps with Cost Management for users by offering smart recommendations to maintain better control of your budget.
  • TIP: AWS users can take advantage of anywhere from 30% to 70% savings on long-term needs.

While these options are helpful, no single option or combination is the perfect solution. These rely on a variety of factors to create a “perfect storm” for truly effective ongoing savings realization. Significant up-front costs, the potential for operator error, or the reliance on users to continually verify settings that can’t be automated are all factors in why your business can’t depend on these options along.

eSOZO works with AWS subscribers to realize underutilized benefits and reduce overall monthly costs:

• Identify idle instance times and isolate hours for which instances for development or staging environments are needed.
• Leaving non-production instances or resources running is one of the biggest factors in “cloud waste”, representing up to a third of all monthly costs.
• Detect underutilized or unused instances – reducing instances eliminates the cost of resources that your business isn’t using.
• Amazon Elastic Block Storage (EBS) data can be backed up to Amazon S3 if the proper strategy is used.

Why does an eSOZO audit of your business’ AWS installations make sense? Because nobody likes paying more than they have to – or more than they should – for anything. The team of experts at eSOZO will work closely with you to fully review your AWS usage and billing, factor in every consideration, and determine the best ways to reduce costs without sacrificing your resources.

Cloud services consultants at eSOZO have helped customers in a variety of industries, and have learned the insider secrets to success using the cloud – but why keep this information a secret? Find out what AWS doesn’t want you to know and contact eSOZO today!

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Author: Aaron White, Date: 10th June 2018