Businesses are always looking for ways to reduce expenses and cloud cost optimization is an important part of that. In this article, you will learn about some strategies that you can use to reduce your cloud spending.
Table of Contents
Find Unused Resources
The first thing you must do when thinking about reducing costs is to find your unused resources. This can help you regain control of your cloud cost bill easily because you are no longer paying for resources you’re not using. You can find unused resources in your AWS account by going to the Billing & Cost Management console & selecting Unused Resources under the Costs section.
Another way to find unused resources is through AWS Trusted Advisor which provides recommendations related to cost optimization, security, fault tolerance, & service limits. To use this feature, you must have an active support plan.
For example, you may have an Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC{ instance that is no longer serving any purpose. If this is the case, you can stop or terminate the instance to immediately reduce your costs.
Identify Idle Resources
The next step should be to identify any idle resources. These are resources that are still running, but not being used. To do this, you’ll need to take a look at your account usage over time & see if there are any patterns. If you notice that certain resources aren’t being used during certain times of the day or week, then you can set them to be turned off during those times. This will help reduce your overall cloud spend.
To do this properly you need to first look at your account usage over time & identify any patterns. You could also use a tool like CloudWatch to monitor your resource usage. Make sure to ask your team members if they’re using all of the resources that have been allocated to them
Once you’ve identified any idle resources, the next step is to figure out how to best utilize them. One option is to use a tool like AWS Lambda or Azure Functions which allows you to run code in response to events. This can help save on compute costs as you only pay for the resources when they’re being used. Another option is to schedule your resources so that they’re only running when you need them.
Assess Current Costs
There are a lot of costs when it comes to your cloud. These are the following:
- Hardware
- Software
- Platforms
- Databases
To optimize your cloud cost, you need to understand what you’re currently paying for and where those charges are coming from. This will help you save money in the long run. You can do this by assessing your current costs. Here are some tips on how to assess your current cloud costs:
- Take inventory of what services you’re using and how much each service costs.
- Look at your usage patterns over the past month or two. Identify which services you use the most and which services are underutilized.
- Calculate the total cost of ownership (TCO) for each service. The TCO includes not only the monthly bill but also other costs such as training, support, and development.
Once you have a good understanding of your current costs, you can start to look for ways to reduce those costs.
Use A Proxy Server
Many people have found that a proxy server helps to reduce their cloud spending. This is a computer that acts as an intermediary between your computer and the internet. When you use a proxy server, your requests to websites are first sent to the proxy server. The proxy server then makes the request on your behalf and returns the response to you.
If you are using a lot of bandwidth, a proxy server can help to reduce your costs. This is because the proxy server will cache data that it receives from websites. This means that when you make a request for data that has already been cached, the proxy server can provide this data without having to retrieve it from the website again. This can save you both time and money.
In addition, using a proxy server can help to improve your security. This is because it can act as a firewall between you and the internet.
Utilize The Heat Maps
Heat maps are a great way to help reduce your cloud spending. By utilizing them, you can see where your compute resources are being utilized the most and make adjustments accordingly. This will help you optimize your compute usage and save money on your cloud bill.
Use the heat map to identify areas of high compute usage and adjust your computing resources accordingly to reduce waste. Make sure to monitor your cloud spending overtime to ensure that you are saving money.
By utilizing the heat maps, you can save money on your cloud bill and optimize your compute usage. This is a great way to reduce your overall cloud spending.
Use Right Size Computing
You should also see how much cloud computing you actually need. One way to optimize your spending is by using the right size instance. If you have an application that doesn’t use much processing power, using a CPU-optimized instance will be overkill and more expensive than necessary. Review your applications periodically and make sure you’re using the size that makes the most sense for each one.
Once you have it, monitor your usage and set alarms to notify you if it exceeds a certain threshold. This way, you can make changes accordingly and not be surprised by a large bill at the end of the month.
Consider Using Spot Instances
Many companies tend to use on-demand instances because they want the peace of mind that comes with knowing they can always count on their instances being available when needed. However, using on-demand instances all the time can get expensive, and that’s where using spot instances can help save you some money. Spot instances are essentially unused EC² capacity that’s been made available to users at a discounted price.
A big advantage of this method is that you don’t have to give up any availability since spot instances can be used just like on-demand instances.
Optimizing your cloud costs should always be a priority and you can start by finding unused resources as well as identifying idle ones. Make sure to assess the current costs and try using a proxy server to help you get the rates down. Utilize heat maps and find out how much computing you actually need. Finally, try using spot instances to help you lower the costs you’re having!
