How to Save Costs with Cloud Cost Optimization

Nowadays, cloud cost optimization has increased in reputation from both academic perspectives and industry. Gone are the days of chunky hardware that was used to store data or  even compact hardware to store data. We have once and for all, conclusively moved away from using hardware for this purpose even! We instead save our date on the cloud now. The same can be said about shared, common online workspaces. But one thing hasn’t changed despite this transition and that is the fact that the space within this resource must be managed efficiently. This is especially true for cloud given its cost. So how do you reduce cost?

What Is Cloud Cost Optimization?

Most cloud computing service providers such as Amazon Web Services and Microsoft Azure charge for the amount of space you order on the cloud and not for the amount of space you use. The reason that people moved to the cloud to save costs and allow scalability. These purposes are hit if one does not optimize space and cut costs. So what is cloud cost optimization? It is the process of reducing the cloud spending by identifying mismanaged resources and eliminating waste. If done well, they can save you a lot of money. So let’s look at how it’s done!

Find Unused Resources

Some resources are used temporarily. The administrator of the IT department will buy a resource in order to boost performance for a specific task. The problem however is that more often than not, they forget to turn off this programme after the task is completed. This programme then simply stays on the cloud and takes up space, but in return, offers no benefit for you. But when you get your cloud computing bills, you will find that you have been charged for this programme as well. Soo the first thing you can do is identify unused programmes and uninstall them.

Consolidate Idle Resources

If you are unwilling to uninstall resources, but still defer the costs incurred by them, you can still do so by consolidating such idle resources. The first step in this is to identify such resources. They take up less than 5% of your CPU usage, but are billed at 100%, which is obviously a significant waste of money. So you should identify such instances and consolidate them to fewer instances and also consolidate computing jobs. There is also no need to allow space for scaling now as the current providers allow for auto-scaling and load balancing within their software itself.

Adopt Heat Maps

A heat map is a data tool. It gives you valuable data regarding the usage of your computing services by showing when there are spikes or dips in computing usage. This proves to be a crucial tool in cloud cost optimization. You can use it to identify resources which are draining the costs and manage them effectively. It gives you an overall idea of when the activity is at the highest or lowest, and based on this data, you can shut down the system and save even more money. Do this by using automatic sensors to avoid human labor costs. 

Right Size Computing

Right sizing is the process of reassessing resources and optimizing them in a manner to save costs. This is mostly done by rearranging processes and organizing them to optimize utilization of the cloud. But how do you do this? All the modern cloud service providers have millions of permissible combinations which can be used to right size your computing. It is practically impossible for a team of people to go through all possible combinations and find the best combination. So use right sizing tools. They find the best combinations and recommend them, saving costs and allowing for peak computing performance.

Invest In Ris

RIs, also known as reserved instances, are a must for companies trying to optimize their cloud costs. These RIs are essentially long term commitments by paying the bills upfront as opposed to later, after the usage. It is said that investing by purchasing RI can save up to 75% of the cost being incurred earlier. RIs are offered in many plans and you should buy one which suits your needs. To determine this, you need to look at your usage over the years and purchase RIs based on that, consistent with such usage and by also allowing for future scaling.

Use Spot Instances

Spot instances are much like reserved instances, but differ in some crucial manners. Firstly, they are auctioned and not sold. You need to keep an eye out and if you find it for the right cost, you must invest in them. Secondly, they are often not long term like RIs. They are short term and hence cannot be a part of your long term strategy for cloud management. Nonetheless, they are perfect for short term usage such as completion of a particular task, which is quite common in companies. So keep an eye out and use them save cloud costs.

Move To Multi-Cloud

A single cloud environment poses the risk of being locked in by the vendor. It reduces your ability to use your resource freely. Hence, it might be prudent to consider multi cloud environment computing. Instead of buying your entire service from say, google, you buy one chunk from amazon, one from google and one from Microsoft. The problem however, is that when you do this you will risk losing out on discounts offered for meeting certain caps, which would be possible only if you use one provider. So you must determine your priority, but it is an option worth considering.

Conclusion

Cloud services can be expensive and in modern companies, they often form the backbone of the companies functioning. So despite being expensive, you cannot forego them. But you can certainly mitigate the costs by adopting the aforementioned approaches. If you can efficiently manage your cloud, you are not only saving costs but are also improving the performance, which also leads to cost saving owing to reduced cloud spend. Hence, it is important to take the time to implement the above mentioned measures for a smooth functioning of your cloud computing.