How to Manage Cloud Costs in AWS
- ML/AI: Use machine learning and artificial intelligence tools in AWS to automate and enhance cost management, like predicting future usage and identifying cost-saving opportunities.
- Cost Analysis/Visibility: Utilize AWS Cost Explorer and other tools to gain insights into your spending patterns and identify cost drivers.
- Resource Optimization: Regularly review and adjust your AWS resources to match your actual usage needs, ensuring you are not over-provisioned.
- Savings Plans: Commit to consistent usage over a one- or three-year term to receive significant discounts on various AWS services.
- Reserved Instances: Purchase EC2 instances at a reduced rate by committing to use them for a one- or three-year term, suitable for predictable workloads.
- Right-Sizing: Continuously evaluate and adjust the size of your resources to ensure they are neither underutilized nor over-provisioned, maximizing cost efficiency.
Why It’s Important
Saves you money
- According to a 2020 report by RightScale (now Flexera), up to 35% of cloud spending is wasted due to idle and underutilized resources .
- In 2021, Flexera found that 36% of enterprise cloud spending was wasted
Reduces waste
- Flexera’s 2021 State of the Cloud Report highlighted that 40% of instances are oversized, leading to unnecessary costs
- A study by ParkMyCloud in 2020 revealed that up to 25% of cloud storage is often abandoned or not used efficiently, leading to significant waste .
6 Tools to Manage AWS Cloud Spend
CLOUD TOGGLE
CLOUD TOGGLE provides the following feature set
Automated Scheduling
- Feature: CLOUD TOGGLE allows users to automate the scheduling of cloud resources, ensuring that instances are only running when needed.
- Benefit: This reduces idle resource time, leading to significant cost savings by avoiding charges for unused compute time.
Multi-Cloud Support
- Feature: The service supports multiple cloud providers, including AWS & Azure
- Benefit: Organizations using a multi-cloud strategy can manage and optimize resources across different platforms from a single interface, simplifying cloud cost management.
User-Friendly Interface
- Feature: CLOUD TOGGLE features an intuitive and user-friendly interface that makes it easy to manage and optimize cloud resources.
- Benefit: Users can quickly set up and start using the service without needing extensive training or expertise, accelerating the adoption of cost-saving practices.
Customizable Alerts and Notifications
- Feature: Users can set up alerts and notifications for specific events
- Benefit: This proactive approach helps prevent unexpected expenses and ensures timely action is taken to address potential cost overruns.
Team and Role-Based Access Control
- Feature: CLOUD TOGGLE offers granular access control, enabling organizations to define roles and permissions for different users and teams.
- Benefit: This enhances security and governance by ensuring that only authorized personnel can make changes to cloud resources and configurations.
AWS Database Scheduling
CLOUD TOGGLE also allows you to power on and off AWS RDS Databases. This is a pain point for many organizations as AWS will automatically power on RDS databases that are turned off for the purposes of updating them periodically.
This can cause significant bill shock if they are left running without the account holder’s knowledge. There is no easy way to power these databases off, other than checking within the AWS Console so automating this task is a clear benefit of CLOUD TOGGLE where a schedule can be set to turn the Database on for an hour a week to enable the potential update and stop the database from running continuously after the update.
To start a FREE Trial go to https://www.cloudtoggle.com
ProsperOps
It automatically adjusts your Reserved Instance and Savings Plan portfolios to maximize savings and reduce the complexity of managing these commitments, ensuring you get the best possible pricing
CloudCheckr
It provides detailed cost visibility, spending reports, and budgeting tools. CloudCheckr identifies unused and underutilized resources, suggests right-sizing opportunities, and helps automate cost-saving measures.
CloudZero
Enables organizations to allocate costs accurately, monitor spending in real-time, and connect costs to business metrics. CloudZero helps identify cost drivers and optimize resource usage, making it easier to control and reduce expenses.
VMWare CloudHealth
CloudHealth offers detailed cost analysis, reporting, and forecasting. It helps identify cost-saving opportunities through rightsizing, Reserved Instance optimization, and policy-driven governance to ensure efficient cloud spending
Apptio Cloudability
Cloudability offers cost allocation, budgeting, and forecasting tools. It helps track and analyze spending, optimize Reserved Instance usage, and implement cost-saving strategies to reduce waste and improve overall cloud financial management.
Native AWS Cost Management Tools
Billing and Cost Management Console
Helps you monitor your AWS spending, view detailed billing information, set up consolidated billing for multiple accounts, and access cost allocation tags to track expenses by project, department, or other categories.
AWS Cost Explorer
Provides detailed cost reports, including usage trends and forecasts. Cost Explorer helps identify cost drivers, track spending over time, and evaluate the impact of Reserved Instances and Savings Plans, enabling better cost control and planning.
AWS Cost Anomaly Detection
Helps detect unexpected increases in costs quickly, allowing you to investigate and address potential issues before they result in significant overspending. Customizable alert thresholds ensure you stay informed about cost anomalies.
AWS Trusted Advisor
Helps detect unexpected increases in costs quickly, allowing you to investigate and address potential issues before they result in significant overspending. Customizable alert thresholds ensure you stay informed about cost anomalies.
AWS Budgets
Provides detailed tracking of your AWS spending and usage, helping you stay within your budget limits. You can create budget alerts for various metrics, such as total cost, specific service usage, or Reserved Instance utilization, enabling proactive cost control.
Reduce Costs Without Increasing Complexity
CLOUD TOGGLE excels at reducing cloud costs by automating the scheduling of resources, providing an easy-to-use interface, supporting multi-cloud environments, and devolving the ability to power off resources to individuals within remote distributed teams. This can be done easily and simply by granting permissions within CLOUD TOGGLE’s intuitive UI without having to give those users permissions to the overall AWS account. Its ability to deliver substantial cost savings without adding complexity makes it a valuable tool for organizations looking to optimize their cloud expenditure without increasing complexity.
To start a FREE Trial go to https://www.cloudtoggle.com
