What are the fundamentals of AWS Cost Control? In this deck I will lead you through cost control culture, describe how to reduce your existing usage, how to design for cost and take a look at the speed of change in the cloud. Do you need help optimising your environment? Contact Paul at Vault Solutions - paul@vaultsolutions.info.

1. CLOUD EFFICIENCY AND OPTIMISATION
MEETUP - MAY 2019
THE
ESSENTIALS
OF AWS
COST
CONTROL
Paul Wakeford - Vault Solutions Pty Ltd

2. ABOUT
Paul Wakeford
Cost Architect
Vault Solutions Pty. Ltd.
www.vaultsolutions.info
linkedin.com/in/paulwakeford
github.com/paulwakeford
@paulwakeford

3. >> Creating a cost control culture
>> Identifying and measuring usage
>> Reducing usage
>> Designing for cost
>> Non-functional cost reductions
>> Next steps
What to Expect

4. >> Cost control culture
In brief..
...what's your goal and how will you
get there.. and stay there?
Don't be 'the cost control person' in
your company. (That's my job!).
Create a team.
Create standards, promote best
practices.

5. >> Identifying &
measuring usage
Tagging
Baselines
Monitoring
Alerting
Tools

6. Tagging
Tagging standard:
Match your company, IT or
project structure
Crowd source it - get buy in
Untagged resource policy
Document it and set a start
date
Tag enforcement:
Easier if you crowd sourced
Use autotagging and missing
tag detection tools -
bit.ly/awsbillingtools
You may need a 'tagging
policeman'

7. Metrics
Alert on variationMeasure baseline Measure actual

8. Cost Reports: (very) detailed cost files for further analysis (Athena,
QuickSight, others...)
AWS tools
Cost Explorer: graphs
Budgets: alerts

9. Third-party tools
Many paid SaaS cost monitoring & reporting services
available: CloudCheckr, Cloudability, CloudHealth,
Cloud Conformity etc
Free tools: Teevity (ICE fork), Komiser
Check Github for other tools
See bit.ly/awsbillingtools

10. >> Reducing usage
Reducing consumption
Using all available levers

11. EVERYTHING is consumption based:
Instance based:
Instance hours
Instance type (size)
Region
Lifecycle
Add storage, data transfer, software
licensing
Reduce consumption = reduce cost

12. Other services - follow the
same principles:
Reduce hours of usage,
Reduce size of data,
Utilise all service offerings
Everything has a dial or lever
to scale up or down.
Consider automation.

13. >> Designing for cost
>> Designing for cost

14. Solution priority
Serverless Instance basedContainer based
Event driven
Secure
Low
management
Higher resource
utilisation
Microservices
Standardisation
Traditional workloads
High perf
High isolation

15. More levers...

16. >> Non-functional
cost reductions
Reserved instances
Account consolidation
Enterprise support
Other options

17. Reserved instances....
Instance options
•Region and AZ
•Instance size
•OS
•Tenancy
•Convertible
•Scheduled RIs
Payment options
•1 or 3 years
•Amount of upfront payment
Very complicated, mistakes are
expensive. Use tooling.

18. Consolidated billing

19. Higher volumes
Consider Enterprise support
>>Access to CO BDMs
>>Technical and sales account
managers
Contact AWS Sales for very
high usage levels
Look at currency options

20. >> Review & next steps
• Establish your baseline, monitor, alert
• Create a cost control culture
• Reduce existing usage
• Consider cost in new designs
• Evaluate tools
• Consider using a partner for dedicated cost resourcing
• Training: www.vaultsolutions.info/awscostcontrol
• Consider Enterprise support
• Stay up-to-date

21. Athena – serverless SQL for S3
Aurora Serverless – serverless SQL
databases
DynamoDB autoscaling
S3 Select and Glacier Select
EC2 Fleet
Per-second billing for EC2
Disabling vCPUs for EC2
RDS Stop/Start
New Spot billing mechanics
AMD and ARM instance types
Managed blockchain
EC2 and RDS recommendations in Cost
Explorer
Instance flex for EC2 and RDS
Credit and discount sharing options
Spot hibernation
Expansion of tagging support
T2 Unlimited
Cost Explorer and Price List APIs
QuickSight flexible billing
S3 intelligent tiering
Per second billing for RDS
AppSync - serverless GraphQL

22. Paul Wakeford
Cost Architect
Vault Solutions Pty. Ltd.
www.vaultsolutions.info
linkedin.com/in/paulwakeford
github.com/paulwakeford
@paulwakeford
>> Questions?