Tips for Keeping Your

AWS Cloud In Check

Regardless of your organization’s size, no one wants to waste money on unused cloud services and resources. When your AWS costs become unmanageable, it may be time for some housekeeping.

Whether you’re in desperate need of quick-hit instant savings, or looking long-term to maximize utilization of your environment, there are fast and effective ways to cut your AWS spend, time and effort in less time than it takes to make your morning cup of coffee.

Check If There are Hidden Unused EBS Volumes in your AWS EnvironmentMaybe you’ve accumulated a bunch of EBS Volumes no longer attached to an instance. That’s ok -it happens to all of us, and these are easy to rack up unnoticed. But you don’t want to pay for them.

Check If There are Hidden Unused EBS Volumes in your AWS Environment

TAKE ACTION: Best practice is to delete a volume when it has been unattached for two weeks, as it is unlikely the same volume will be utilized again.

Ok, well if you’re already in there, how about underutilized EBS volumes?

So your workloads have changed and now you have active volumes with over-provisioned IOPS. No sweat. You can easily ID these potentially wasted volumes and terminate them or choose a more appropriate storage option.

Ok, well if you’re already in there, how about underutilized EBS volumes?

TAKE ACTION: If a volume is attached to an instance and barely has any read/writes on that volume, the instance is either inactive or the volume is unnecessary. These are good candidates to flag for rightsizing evaluation.

And Don’t Forget Those Underutilized EC2 Instances Too...

Do you have overprovisioned EC2 Instances? If so, it’s time to give them the pink slip. By identifying and decommissioning running instances with a low average and maximum CPU utilization, you could be saving even more by giving these slackers the boot or rightsizing them.

And Don’t Forget Those Underutilized EC2 Instances Too...

TAKE ACTION: A good starting place for rightsizing is to look for instances that have an average CPU < 5% and maximum CPU < 20% for 30 days. Instances that fit this criteria are viable candidates for rightsizing or termination.

So you’re an AWS rock star and have purchased Reserved Instances (RIs). You’ve already locked in awesome savings, but maybe some of those RIs are unused or underutilized. Since you’ve already paid for them, you definitely want to ensure they aren’t wasted! There are modifications you can make, and don't forget they’re free of charge, to ensure the RIs you’ve purchased are used.

Find Unused/Underutilized Reserved Instances a New Home

TAKE ACTION: Once purchased, RIs can be modified in several waysat no additional cost: switching availability zones within the same region, altering the instance type within the same family (this includes both splitting & merging instance types), switching between EC2 Classic & Virtual Private Cloud, changing the account that benefits from the RI purchase.

Find Unused/Underutilized Reserved Instances a New Home

Identify Assets To Put on a “Lights on Lights off” Schedule

Outside of production, most of your instances aren’t being used 24x7x365, so why would you want to pay for them to run all the time? Look for test and development infrastructure that can be turned off at night and on the weekends, this can save between 488 to 592 instance hours per month.

TAKE ACTION: Set a target for weekly hours that non-production systems should run. If an instance is turned off between 5pm and 9am on weekdays and stopped weekends and holidays, then total billable hours per month would range from 152 to 184 hours per instance.

Identify Assets To Put on a “Lights on Lights off” Schedule

Final Thoughts

Notice a trend? The simplest way to keep your cloud in check is to continuously optimize it. This is a lot easier when you have a tool that can help you automate and continuously monitor your AWS environment. And remember, it's not just about cost, but usage and efficiency as well. The cloud was designed to be easy, so managing it should also be easy. Don't worry, we've got your back.

So don’t walk, RUN to learn more tips for keeping your cloud in check: http://bit.ly/10-best-practices-AWS-cost