Cost Optimization

The ability to avoid or eliminate unneeded cost or suboptimal resources.

Design Principles

• Adopt a consumption model

  • You don't need to pay for what you don't use (unlike a paid-for datacenter)

• Measure overall efficiency

• Stop spending money on data centers

• Analyze and attribute expenditure

• Use managed services

Best Practices

Cost-effective Resources

• Reserved and Spot

  • EC2 Instances

• Cost Allocation Tags

• Monitor using Cost Explorer in Billing

Matching Supply and Demand

• Scale In when Demand Drops

  • Auto Scaling

  • CloudWatch

Expenditure Awareness

• Notifications when Costs Exceed Budget

  • CloudWatch -> Simple Notification Service (SNS)

• Cost Allocation Tags

Optimizing Over Time

• Weekly Update Email

  • Trusted Advisor

• AWS News Blog