Cloud computing has become very popular in the information technology field in recent times. It is popular due to the ease of managing hardware and infrastructure without owning them.
There are many cloud service providers in the market, and Amazon Web Services leads all of them by providing more than 200 cloud computing services. While architecting any software product, we must consider many more cases to design scalable, secure, and efficient products.
AWS is suggesting the following six pillars for a well-architect application:
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Security
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Performance
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Reliability
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Sustainability
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Operational Excellence
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Cost Optimization
In this article, I would like to discuss cost optimization. AWS offers a range of tools, best practices, and strategies that help you to optimize your workload/service costs.
Following are some key steps and considerations for AWS cost optimization:
- Rightsized Resources/Workloads instances.
- Use Reserved and Spot Instances.
- Consider Saving Plans.
- Use AWS Cost Explorer and Budgets.
- Serverless Architectures.
Those are the few common steps that most of the Software Engineering team is aware of and taking care of for Cost optimization. So, let’s discuss some unusual steps and considerations to optimize AWS cost. It will be in multiple parts of the blog series, and the targeted audience is AWS practitioners.
Cost of data Transfer:
In general, while architecting software products using AWS, we fail to spot the data transfer cost; however, considering a few data transfer decisions can help save some bucks from monthly AWS billing.
AWS S3:
Data transfer between one region to another region from the s3 bucket will incur the highest cost from the S3 bucket data transfer perspective. So, design your architecture so minimal data transfer between multiple areas is required.
EC2 or IP-based Workloads:
Data transfer from the Internet to AWS is free, but transfer from AWS to the Internet is chargeable. So, avoid communicating internal workloads using Public IP/Elastic IP. Use private IP instead. (For free data transfers).
VPC Endpoints allow connectivity between AWS services over private networking and can be used to reduce public data transfer and NAT gateway costs. We can use the Gateway VPC endpoint from private subnet EC2 instances to access S3 bucket data. Gateway VPC endpoints have no hourly charges and support S3 and DynamoDB.
Route 53
Use the TTL value wisely. A low TTL value (e.g., 15 seconds) will expire the cache quickly to avoid stealing data. However, It will increase the traffic to Route53, costing you more.
Create alias records, when possible, data traffic using alias records mapped to resources provided at no cost. Resources like., Elastic Load Balancer, Elastic Beanstalk Environments, API Gateway, VPC Endpoints, S3 website Buckets, CloudFront.
CloudFront
The cost of data out per edge location varies; hence have to select/reduce the number of edge locations. It will help to reduce the cost of outside data transfer through CloudFront.
In conclusion, embracing unconventional strategies for AWS cost optimization can set your cloud infrastructure on a more efficient and cost-effective trajectory. By thinking beyond the usual cost-cutting measures and diving into the depths of your AWS resources and usage patterns, you open new avenues for savings and improved resource allocation.
That’s it from the blog; let’s discuss more interesting steps in the next part of the AWS cost optimization blog series. Please follow Aspire Softserv Pvt. Ltd and our LinkedIn profile to keep up to date about upcoming Blogs or Contact us to solve your business problems with our expert team.
