This document summarizes a study of 250 companies' use of Amazon Web Services. It finds that many companies are underutilizing resources and not using reserved instances, which could save significant costs if used for at least three months. Specifically, only 33% of instances are reserved, but 94% could be. It also finds that medium instances have very low 12% utilization rates on average, and companies would save money by using small instances instead.

1. BIG DATA TRENDS:
PUBLIC CLOUD COST BENCHMARK STUDY
250 COMPANIES
250,000 INSTANCES
2.5PB OF STORAGE
THIRD QUARTER 2012
DAVID FEINLEIB SPONSORED BY
THE BIG DATA GROUP, LLC
thebigdatagroup.com Copyright © 2012 The Big Data Group, LLC bigdatalandscape.com

2. Study Goals
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• Benchmark industry public cloud
costs and utilization
• Enable buyers to improve
operational efficiency based on
cloud utilization best practices
• Leverage previously unavailable
sources of Big Data to provide
market insights
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3. Study Data
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• 250 companies
• 250,000 Amazon EC2 instances
• 7,543,955 instance hours
• 2.5PB of storage
• Measured Oct 1 - 31, 2012
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4. Key Findings
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Public cloud buyers Many instances are underutilized. Significant storage goes unattached. Many
can achieve buyers are reluctant to purchase reserved instances, which can provide cost
significant savings savings when used for at least three months.
by optimizing usage
• 33% of instances are running as reserved
instances but some 94% should be
• 17% of storage is unattached (unused)
• Elastic Cloud compute resources account for
more spend (at 62% of total spend) than any
other resource type
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5. Instance Definitions
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For the purposes of this study, instances were grouped into Small, Medium, Large,
and Huge instance types. The instances included in each type are shown below.
Type Instances
t1.micro, m1.small, c1.medium,
Small m1.medium
Medium m1.large, m2.xlarge
m1.xlarge, c1.xlarge,
Large m2.2xlarge, m2.4xlarge
cc1.4xlarge, cc2.8xlarge,
Huge hi1,4xlarge, cg1.4xlarge
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6. Launched Instances By Type
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The majority of Small instances account for about 42% of launched instances, medium for about
launched instances 40%, large for just over 17%, and huge instances for under 1%.
are small and mid
sized.
0.44%
17%
42%
40%
Small Medium Large Huge
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7. Instance Runtime By Type
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Small instances account for 53% of instance runtime hours while medium
instances account for 29%.
Huge
Large 1%
18%
Small
53%
Medium
29%
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8. Launched And Runtime Instances
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Smaller instances Small instances account for 53% of instance runtime hours compared with 42% of
account for more launched instances. Medium instances account for 29% of instance runtime hours
hours run compared compared with 40% of launched instances.
with the number that
are launched
Launched Instances Runtime Instances
Third Quarter 2012 Third Quarter 2012
Huge
Large Huge Large 0.64%
17% 0.44% 18%
Small Small
42% 53%
Medium Medium
40% 29%
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9. Average Instance Utilization Rates
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Most customers use Medium instances are only about 12% utilized while small instances are just under
medium instances 17% utilized. The low utilization rates of medium instances combined with medium
when they should instances accounting for some 40% of launched instances means that most
customers use medium instances when they should use small instances instead.
use small instances
16.7%
12.8%
11.9%
3.9%
Small Medium Large Huge
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10. Top Cloud Spend Categories
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EC2 Instances Amazon Web Services customers in the sample group spend more on EC2
account for the instances than on any other type of resource.
majority of spend
EC2 Instances
64%
EBS Volumes
7%
RDS Databases
3%
S3 Estimated
26%
Note: S3 Data is based on a smaller set of randomly selected customers
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11. Deployment Size Breakdown
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The majority of public Some 44% of customers operate 1 - 10 instances per month while 45% operate
cloud customers 11 - 100 instances per month.
operate between 1
and 100 instances
per month
44%
45% 1-10 instances/mo
11-100 instances/mo
101-500 instances/mo
501+ instances/mo
1%
10%
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12. Reserved And Unreserved Instances
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Most customers Only 33% of instances are reserved today, while some 94% of instances, if
underutilize reserved converted to reserved instances, would result in expected cost savings.
instances, losing out
on significant cost Reserved and Unreserved Instances Reserved Instances - Actual and Recommended
savings Third Quarter 2012 Third Quarter 2012
94%
Reserved
33%
Unreserved 33%
67%
Actual Recommended
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13. Top Reasons Customers Avoid Reserved Instances
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Many reasons buyers Many buyers are reluctant to purchase reserved instances, which provide significant cost
cite for not savings when used for between three and seven months. Projects typically last twice as
purchasing reserved long as buyers expect and buyers tend to stay with the same instance size for at least half
a year, making the purchase of reserved instances worthwhile.
instances prove
financially unsound
• Expect project to run only for a short
time
• Undecided about proper instance size
• Lack of time to purchase
• Fear of commitment to reserved
instances
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14. Emerging Trends
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• Amazon RDS has not gained widespread adoption,
likely due to the difficulty of moving to and from RDS
databases and the inability to sync only specific
database tables
• Amazon Glacier, which is 10X cheaper than Simple
Storage Service (S3) but significantly slower, is
expected to replace a lot of S3 storage for digital
archiving
• The Reserved Instance Marketplace will need changes
to gain widespread adoption
The marketplace lacks significant volume today because it is
relatively new and because a company needs to have a US bank
account to use it. In the future, without changes, we do not expect
the marketplace to gain significant volume because prices tend to
go down over the reservation term, making the resale of reserved
instances at originally committed prices uncompetitive with lower
prices at the time of resale
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15. Recommendations For Buyers
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Customers can
achieve significant
• Evaluate
cost savings through
proper public cloud • Applicability of reserved instances
management
• Any unattached storage
• Instance sizes relative to utilization
• Consider
• Smaller instances
• Reserved instances
• Retiring unattached storage
• Ensure total response time stays within
acceptable range (1.5 - 2.5 seconds)
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16. For More Information
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David Feinleib
dave@thebigdatagroup.com
THE BIG DATA GROUP 16