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To start with, Amazon web services is an Infrastructure as a Service also known as IaaS which offers a variety of services. AWS is an extensive and evolving cloud computing platform that offers organizational tools such as database storage, compute power, and content delivery services.

Cloud computing allows you to save significant costs once your infrastructure is set up and data migration is completed. Even after this, it is advised that you optimize your costs to avoid any miscalculations or surprises. Cost optimization in AWS not only allows you to refine costs it also improves the system over its life cycle resulting in maximizing your return on investment. In this context, we have listed 10 best practices and handy tips to optimize AWS cost and performance for your business.

1. Select the Right S3 Storage Class

Amazon Simple Storage is an AWS storage service that enables your cloud to be extremely reliable, scalable, and secure. Amazon offers six tiers of storage at various price points. To determine which tier is best suited for business you can depend on factors such as usage and accessibility of your data and retrieving data in case there is a disaster. The lower the tier the more hours it will require to retrieve data.

AWS S3 Intelligent Tier case is one of the six tiers being offered. The plus point in this tier is that it automatically analyzes and moves your data to the appropriate storage tier. S3 Intelligent Tier further helps inexperienced developers to optimize the cost of cloud-based storage. This class saves you an immense amount of cost by placing objects based on changing data patterns. If you know your data patterns, you can combine that with a string Lifecycle policy to select the perfect storage classes for your entire data.

Since various classes will break down your costs differently, an accurate and calculated storage class will result in guaranteed cost savings.

2. Choose the Right Instances for Your Workloads

When it comes to instances, you can choose from different instance types according to your costs and configurations. In this regard using AWS instance scheduler can be very helpful. Selecting the wrong instance will only increase your costs as you will end up paying for storage that you do not even require. This false decision can also make you end up underprovisioning. This means you have a limited capacity to handle the workload and data. There is always an option to either upgrade or downgrade, depending on your business need, or move to different instance options and types. Staying up to date on this will help you save money and reduce costs in the long run.

3. Track, Monitor, and Analyze Cloud Usage

There are different tools available to monitor and track instance metrics and data. To plan your budget accordingly you should have a clear understanding of your data usage. An assessment of your workload will help you in making that decision. The workload can be easily assessed with the data gathered. If there is a need then the instance size can be scaled up or lowered.

Amazon trusted advisor is one of the tools that you can use. This tool keeps a weekly check on the unused resources while also helping you optimize your research usage.

These tools also provide real-time guidance for the users to assist in restricting the resources used. There is also a timely update to assure the safety and security of data. Naturally, cost optimization is also addressed.

4. Purchase Reserve and Spot Instances

Purchasing Reserved Instances is a simple way to reduce AWS costs. But it can also be an easy way to increase AWS costs if you don’t employ the Reserved Instance as much as you expected to or choose the wrong type of Reserved Instance. Therefore, rather than suggesting that purchasing Reserved Instances is one of the best practices for AWS cost optimization, we’re going to recommend the effective management of Reserved Instances as an AWS cost optimization best practice—effective management consisting of weighing up all the variables before making a purchase and then monitoring utilization throughout the reservation’s lifecycle.

Reserved instances also let you purchase a reservation of capacity for a one or three-year duration. In this manner you pay a much lower hourly rate than on-demand instances, reducing your cost up to 75% on cloud computing costs.

5. Utilize Instance Scheduling

It is essential to ensure that all non-critical instances are only started when they need to be used. You can schedule start and stop times for such instances as required in software development and testing. For example, If you work in a 9-to-5 environment, you could save up to 65% of your cloud computing costs by turning these instances on between 8 AM and 8 PM during working hours.

By monitoring and checking up on the metrics it can be determined in the process where the instances are used more frequently, there is always a chance that the scheduling can be interrupted, and that is also when access to the instances is required. It’s worth pointing out that while instances are scheduled to be off, you are still being charged for EBS volumes and other services attached to them.

6. Get The Latest Updates on Your Services

AWS strives to assign cloud computing for personal and enterprise use. They are always updating their products and introducing features that improve the performance of services. When AWS announces newer versions of instances, they consistently feature better performance and improved functionality. Upgrading to these latest generations of instances saves you money and gives you improved cloud functionality.

7. Use Autoscaling to Reduce Database Costs

Autoscaling automatically monitors your cloud resources and then adjusts them for optimum performance. When one service requires more computing resources, it will ‘borrow’ from idle instances. This option then automatically scales down resource provision when demand eases. In addition to this auto-scaling also lets you adjust scaling on a schedule for predictable and recurring load changes.

8. Cleaning Up EBS Volumes

Elastic Book Store (EBS) is the volume for storage that all the Amazon EC2 instances are using. These are added to your monthly bill, whether they are idle or being used. If these blocks are left lying idle, they will contribute to your expenses even when the EC2 instances are decommissioned. Deleting unattached EBS blocks when decommissioning instances will cut your storage costs by up to half.

There could be thousands of unattached EBS volumes in your AWS Cloud, depending on how long your business has been operating in the cloud and the number of instances launched without the delete box being checked. It is definitely one of our AWS cost optimization best practices to consider, even if your business is new to the AWS Cloud.

9. Carefully Manage Data Transfer Costs

There is always a cost linked with transferring your data to the cloud. Whether it is a transfer between AWS and the internet or between different storage services, you will have to pay a cost. Transfer costs with the cloud providers can add up quickly in this process.

To manage this better you should design your infrastructure and framework so that data transfer across all the AWS is optimized. You should be able to complete this transfer with the least amount of transfer charges possible.

10. Terminate Idle Resources

The term “zombie assets” is most used to describe any unused asset contributing to the cost of operating in the AWS Cloud. Other assets that contribute to this category are components of instances that were activated when an instance failed to launch, unused Elastic Load Balancers., obsolete snapshots, and unattached EBS volumes. A problem businesses face when they are trying to implement AWS cost optimization best practices is that some unused assets are difficult to find. For example, unattached IP addresses are sometimes difficult to locate in AWS System Manager, Any unused asset that contributes to your overall AWS expenses is a ‘zombie asset’. There are tools like CloudHealth that will help you identify and terminate zombie assets that contribute to your monthly bill. Anything you don’t use and isn’t planning to use in the future should be deleted with the help of such tools. Such tools will help you reduce costs by deleting idle load balancers.

In conclusion:

With a continuing need for businesses to take a position within the latest, competitive, and result-oriented technology, it becomes important to seem at cost-saving tools and factors. AWS offers you powerful cloud computing tools you can use to transform your business and its needs. But if you are not so proficient in using AWS services and tools, AWS can cost you a lot of money. These AWS cost optimization tips above will help you reduce the expenses of using the AWS platform. Cost optimization in AWS is a continuous process. You can’t perform it once and then never visit it again. You should continuously monitor your resource usage and instance status to make sure you only pay for the assets you require.

Therefore, try these AWS cost optimization best practices and get ready to optimize your cost without compromising performance.

Looking for a way to get the most out of AWS? Talk to an AWS expert here at VentureDive, an AWS consulting partner!

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Top 10 Tips for Cost Optimization in AWS

Falak Sher