Reduce your AWS bill (FinOps)

Recently i was working with an AWS customer and the main ask for the customer was to reduce their AWS bill. As a cloud architect , i supposed to do the analysis of customer existing infrastucture, Aws resources used and the useage and access pattern of the those resources.

In this arcticle, i would like to summarize the broader level activity which was done to reduce the AWS billing.

Analyis : we performed the through analysis of customer existing invoices through azure billing console and AWS cost explorer to analyse the cost consumed by various aws resources (ex EC2, Database, Aurora)

Image reference : https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/aws-cloud-financial-management/back-to-basics-getting-started-with-the-billing-console/

Image reference : https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/aws/aws-cost-explorer-update-better-filtering-grouping-report-management-ri-reports/

Finding and Reporting : Once we identified the possible resources , where cost saving can be done. we discussed with stake holders and development teams with our findings. This gives us the opprtunity to validate the findings with the businees requirements of the teams. ( like why EC2 instances are runnning during week ends )

Recomondations: Based on our analysis and discussion with team , we recommned some cost saving measures to client.

Let me summarize them here for others.

• Reservation and saving plan should be used where ever thay are applicable.
  i). 1 Year vs 3 Yr Reservation
  ii) NoUpfront vs Partial Upfront vs Full Upfront
  iii) Standard vs Convertible reservation
  iv) Regional vs Zonal Reserved instances
  v)EC2 Savings Plan and Compute Savings Plan
• S3 Life cycle rules for retention and movemnt of data should be followed.
• Use S3 Intelligent tiering.
• Shut down non necessary EC 2 instances.
• Delete all unused pr under utilized resources.
• Remove unused EBS volumes.
• Remove unsed elastic IPs.
• Select the right sizing of the azure resources.
• Minimize the data transfer betwwen AWS zones.
• Use EC2 spot instances for non crtical work load.
• Use Amazon cloud frond to distribute the static data to customers.
• Migrate workload to Serverless resources like AWS lambda.
• Use AWS free tier for sand boxing and POC development.

Enable Budget, Billing alarm and Billing alerts for your AWS account.

Summary :

Cost analysis is not a one time activity. its a practice and it should be done on a regular basis.