AWS Cost Optimization: Tools & Best Practices

Are you tired of seeing sky-high bills for your cloud usage on AWS? As much as we love the flexibility and scalability of the cloud, it's important to keep an eye on costs to avoid overspending.

If you're not careful, your AWS bills can quickly add up bad, leaving you with a hefty price tag. That's where AWS cost optimization comes into play. By using various tools and best practices you can optimize your costs and maximize your cloud investment.

So, sit back, relax, and let's dive into the world of AWS cost optimization!

What is Cost Optimization in AWS & Why Should You Care?

If you're an AWS user, you must be familiar with the question, "Why is AWS so expensive?" The truth is, it doesn't have to be. Cost optimization in AWS is all about reducing your AWS costs without sacrificing performance. Using the right tools and best practices, you can optimize your AWS spending and maximize your cloud investment.

Cost optimization in AWS is not just about saving money. It's also about maximizing the value of your cloud investment. Optimizing your costs can free up resources for innovation, growth, and other business priorities. Plus, with the right cost optimization strategies in place, you can confidently scale your infrastructure, knowing that you're not overspending on resources you don't need.

So, why should you care about cost optimization in AWS? Because it's the key to unlocking the full potential of the cloud. With the right cost optimization tools and practices, you can reduce your AWS bills, increase efficiency, and unlock new opportunities for growth and innovation.

Billing and Cost Management Console

The Billing and Cost Management Console is your one-stop shop for managing your AWS costs. This console provides a comprehensive view of your AWS usage and spending, making it easy to analyze your costs and identify areas for optimization.

One of the key features of the Billing and Cost Management Console is the ability to set up billing alerts. With billing alerts, you can receive notifications when your costs exceed a certain threshold or reach a specific usage level. This feature is essential for avoiding unexpected overages and managing your costs proactively.

It also provides detailed cost breakdowns for each AWS service, so you can see exactly where your money is going. You can drill down into each service to view usage and spending trends, set up custom cost allocation tags, and export your usage data for further analysis.

Billing and Cost Management Console also can set up cost-saving initiatives. You can create custom savings plans and reserve instances to reduce costs and increase efficiency. The console also provides recommendations for cost-saving opportunities based on your usage patterns.

AWS CloudWatch

AWS CloudWatch is a monitoring tool that helps you closely monitor your AWS resources and applications. With CloudWatch, you can monitor your resource utilization in real-time, set alarms for specific thresholds, and gain insights into your overall system health.

AWS CloudWatch can monitor logs and metrics. You can track errors and troubleshoot issues in real time by monitoring your logs. You can also use CloudWatch to monitor your metrics, such as CPU usage, memory usage, and network traffic. This can help you identify trends and adjust your resources as needed, which can help you optimize your costs.

It also can set up automated actions. You can configure CloudWatch to automatically take action when specific events occur, such as when a threshold is exceeded, or an error is detected. This feature can help you respond to issues quickly and efficiently, which can help you minimize downtime and reduce your overall costs.

AWS CloudWatch also integrates with other AWS services, such as AWS Lambda and Amazon EC2, which can help you monitor your resources and applications more effectively. Using CloudWatch with other AWS services, you can gain a comprehensive view of your system health and take action to optimize your costs and improve your overall performance.

AWS Cost Explorer

AWS Cost Explorer is a powerful tool that helps you analyze your AWS costs and identify areas for optimization. With Cost Explorer, you can visualize your spending trends, create custom reports, and set up cost-saving initiatives.

AWS Cost Explorer can provide detailed cost breakdowns for your AWS services. You can see how much you are spending on each service and drill down into each service to see detailed usage and spending trends. This feature is essential for identifying areas where you may be overspending and taking action to optimize your costs.

It also can create custom reports. You can create reports based on specific periods, AWS accounts, or services and customize your reports to show the data you need to see. This feature is essential for gaining insights into your AWS costs and identifying trends that can help you optimize your spending.

AWS Cost Explorer also provides cost-saving recommendations based on your usage patterns. These recommendations can include suggestions for reserved instances, spot instances, or other cost-saving opportunities. By following these recommendations, you can optimize your spending and maximize your AWS investment.

AWS Pricing Calculator

With AWS Pricing Calculator, you can estimate the cost of your AWS resources and services based on your usage patterns and deployment needs. It provides cost estimates for different AWS services.

You can select the services you plan to use, choose the specific instances you need, and set the usage patterns for each service. The calculator then provides an estimated cost based on your selections, which can help you plan and budget for your AWS deployments.

You can compare the costs of deploying your resources and services in different regions and choose the region that best suits your needs and budget. It also allows you to create and save multiple scenarios for your AWS deployments.

This feature is essential for planning and budgeting for different scenarios, such as usage patterns or deployment sizes. You can easily compare the costs of each scenario and choose the one that best suits your needs and budget.

AWS Budgets

With AWS Budgets, you can set custom cost and usage budgets, receive alerts when you exceed those budgets, and take action to optimize your spending.

You can set custom cost and usage budgets. You can set budgets for individual services or your entire AWS account and monthly, quarterly, or yearly budget periods. This feature is essential for controlling your AWS costs and avoiding unexpected charges.

AWS Budgets can provide alerts when you exceed your budget. You can set up email or SMS alerts to notify you when you are approaching or exceeding your budget, which can help you take action to reduce your spending and optimize your costs.

AWS Budgets also provides detailed cost and usage reports, which can help you identify areas where you may be overspending and take action to optimize your costs. You can see how much you are spending on each service and drill down into each service to see detailed usage and spending trends.

Also Read: Planning to Migrate from AWS to Azure?

Seven Best Practices for AWS Cost Optimization

1. Right-size Your EC2 Instances

EC2 instances are the virtual servers that power your AWS applications. By selecting the right size for your workload, you can optimize your resources and save money.

Many organizations make the mistake of selecting larger EC2 instances than they need, resulting in wasted resources and unnecessary costs. By right-sizing your EC2 instances, you can Optimize EC2 instances to reduce wastage and costs.

To right-size your EC2 instances, you must carefully evaluate your workload. Then only you can select the instance type and size that best matches your requirements. This involves considering factors such as CPU, memory, network performance, storage capacity, type of application running, and the workload generated.

Once you have selected the right size for your EC2 instances, you can further optimize your resources by using tools such as AWS Auto Scaling and AWS Spot Instances. These tools automatically adjust the number of instances in your fleet based on demand and offer significant cost savings for workloads that can tolerate interruptions, respectively.

2. Choose the Appropriate AWS Region

AWS has a global network of regions and availability zones, and selecting the right region can significantly impact your application's performance and cost.

Choosing the right region involves considering factors such as the location of your users, the proximity to other AWS services you are using, and the regulatory requirements of your industry.

Selecting the region closest to your users can reduce latency and improve the user experience while reducing data transfer costs.

In addition, choosing the appropriate AWS region can also help you optimize your costs. Different regions have different pricing for AWS services, and selecting a region with lower costs can result in significant savings over time.

To help you choose the right AWS region for your workloads, AWS provides tools such as the AWS Global Infrastructure map and the AWS Region Table, which allow you to compare the pricing and features of different regions and make an informed decision.

3. Turn Off Unused Instances By Creating Schedules

One common issue many organizations face with their AWS environments is leaving instances running when not in use. This can lead to wasted resources and unnecessary costs. However, by creating schedules to turn off unused instances, you can save money and reduce waste.

AWS offers Instance Scheduler and Systems Manager Automation to schedule instance start and stop times based on usage.

By creating schedules to turn off unused instances, you can ensure that your resources are only active when needed, reducing costs and increasing efficiency. This practice is particularly useful for non-production environments, such as development or testing environments, where instances are often left outside working hours.

4. Use or Sell Under-Utilized Reserved Instances

One way to save money on your AWS costs is by using Reserved Instances (RI) to reduce your hourly usage rates. However, you may still pay more than necessary if you are not using your RIs to their full potential. This is where the practice of using or selling under-utilized Reserved Instances comes in.

By monitoring your usage patterns and matching them to the most appropriate RI type, you can ensure that you are getting the maximum cost savings from your RIs.

However, if you have RIs that are not being used or are being used less than expected, you can use them for other workloads or sell them on the AWS Reserved Instance Marketplace.

The AWS RI Marketplace allows you to sell your unused or under-utilized RIs to other AWS users, recouping some of your costs and potentially saving money for others. This is a great way to optimize AWS costs and maximize savings.

5. Leverage Compute Savings Plans to Reduce Compute Costs

Compute Savings Plans are a flexible, low-cost pricing model for EC2 instances and Fargate containers. With this model, you can save up to **66% **of your compute costs over On-Demand rates.

Compute Savings Plans require a commitment to use a specific amount of compute usage for one or three years. In return, you get a discount on the on-demand rates for the instance families and regions you choose.

Good part? it includes no upfront costs or minimum usage requirements.

6. Identify and Delete Orphaned Snapshots

AWS snapshots are a great way to back up your data, but they can also be a source of unnecessary costs if they are not properly managed. An orphaned snapshot is a snapshot that is no longer associated with an active EBS volume. These snapshots continue in your account, taking up space and adding to your storage costs.

To identify orphaned snapshots, you can use the AWS Management Console, AWS CLI, or a third-party tool like CloudCheckr. Once you have identified the orphaned snapshots, you can delete them to free up space and reduce costs.

7. Use AWS Enterprise Billing Console to Charge Back Amazon Cost To Internal Users

When an organization has multiple departments and teams using AWS resources, tracking the use of each team can be challenging. This can be solved by using the AWS Enterprise Billing Console to allocate and chargeback AWS costs to internal users.

With the AWS EBC, you can create cost allocation reports that show the usage and cost of each team. You can use these reports to allocate costs to individual teams based on their usage and charge them accordingly.

This helps you track the usage and cost of each team and department. Doing so encourages them to optimize their usage and cost, leading to better cost management across the organization.

Also Read: How to Run Kubernetes on AWS?

1. For Controlling Cost

• Plan a budget to manage your AWS resource spending.
• Review your costs with the Cost and Usage Report in the AWS Console.
• Utilize AWS Trusted Advisor to identify unused resources and estimate costs.

2. For Optimizing Compute Instances

• Choose reserved instances for predictable and consistent workloads, and use on-demand instances for unpredictable or variable workloads.
• Consider using spot instances for workloads that don't require high reliability, as they can be significantly cheaper.
• Schedule instances to run only when needed or during business hours to save costs. You can use AWS Instance Scheduler or other tools to automate this.
• Choose the appropriate service for your workload, whether EC2 or another service that meets your requirements.
• Purchase reserved instances for a reasonable period, and don't keep them longer than necessary if you don't need them.
• Use the latest instance types, as they often offer better performance or efficiency at a lower price.

3. For Optimizing Storage And Multiple Other Resources

• Store your production files in S3 and use S3 Smart Tiering to move them between storage tiers based on activity.
• Use S3 Glacier to archive infrequently used data and Glacier Deep Archive to back up your long-term archived data.
• To avoid orphaned EBS volumes, check the "Delete on Termination" checkbox when creating EC2 instances.
• In most cases, keep EBS snapshots for only a few weeks, and delete them as new ones are created.
• Terminate unneeded resources such as database volumes and Elastic IPs that are not in use.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is cost optimization in AWS?

Cost optimization in AWS refers to minimizing the cost of running workloads in the cloud by utilizing resources efficiently. This can be done through reserved and spot instances & automating instance scheduling, and more. It also involves choosing the right services for your workload and scaling resources appropriately.

What are the four best practices of cost optimization in AWS?

The four best practices of cost optimization in AWS are:

• Choosing the right instance types and services for your workloads.
• Utilizing Reserved Instances and Savings Plans to save on costs.
• Monitoring and optimizing resource utilization.
• Automating instance scheduling and scaling resources as needed.

Which AWS service provides cost-optimization recommendations?

AWS Trusted Advisor is a service that provides cost-optimization recommendations to help users optimize their AWS resources and reduce costs. It provides insights across multiple categories, including cost optimization, performance, security, and fault tolerance.

Further Reading