The document outlines strategies for reducing cloud storage costs, highlighting key solutions from RightScale, including their cloud management platform and optimization techniques. It covers various aspects of storage management, such as orchestration, monitoring, block/disk storage options, pricing, and cost-saving measures across multiple cloud services. The focus is on automating resource usage, avoiding over-provisioning, and implementing effective backup and snapshot policies to optimize cloud budgets.

1. NINE WAYS TO REDUCE
CLOUD STORAGE COSTS

2. • Kim Weins
• VP Marketing and Cloud Cost Strategy
• Brandon Willer
• Director Engagements and Cloud Cost Strategy
Presenters

3. Two Solutions from RightScale
RightScale
Cloud Management Platform
Orchestrate, automate and govern workloads
across all your environments.
VIRTUAL
SERVERS
PUBLIC
CLOUDS
ANY CLOUD
SERVICE
PRIVATE
CLOUDS
BARE METAL
SERVERS
CONTAINER
CLUSTERS
RightScale
Optima
Work collaboratively across the organization
to manage and optimize clouds costs.
Orchestration
Cloud Workflow
Plugins
Monitoring
Access Control
Accounts/Groups
Access/Permissions
Tags
Policies
Cost
Security/Compliance
Operational
RIGHTSCALE
CMP ENGINE
EXTENSIBLE ORCHESTRATION API

4. Optimizing Cost is Top 2018 Initiative
Self-Estimated
Wasted Spend
Additional
Wasted Spend Measured
by RightScale

5. • Block/Disk Storage
• Over-provisioned volumes
• Premium vs Standard
• Special issues per cloud
• Unattached volumes
• Snapshots
• Snapshot retention and Azure Backup options
• Object Storage
• Hot/Cool/Cold
• Redundancy options
• Azure: Storage account types
• DBaaS/Data Warehouse
Agenda
4

6. DISKS/VOLUMES

7. AWS Azure Google IBM
Service Name EBS Managed Disks Persistent Disk Block Storage
Volume Types Cold HDD
Throughput Optimized HDD
General Purpose SSD
PIOPs SSD
Magnetic (previous gen)
Standard
Premium (SSD)
Standard
SSD
SSD
-Endurance tiers
-Performance (PIOPS)
IOPs/GB for SSD GP SSD = 3
PIOPS SSD up to 50/GB
1.8 to 4.9 - fixed by
disk type
30 Endurance .25 to 10
PIOPs up to 48K
Block/Disk Storage - Overview
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Source: RightScaleAs of Feb 26, 2018

8. AWS Azure (us-east-2) Google IBM
Name of Services EBS Managed Disk Persistent Disk Block Storage
Magnetic
(per GB-month)
$0.045 $0.040 to $0.048
plus $0.0005 per 10K
transactions
$0.040 N/A
SSD
(per GB-month)
$0.100 $0.11 to $0.15 $0.170 $0.10 to $0.58
Included IOPS/GB 3 1.8 to 4.9 30 .25 to 10
PIOPs SSD
(per GB-month)
$.125 N/A N/A $.10
PIOPs SSD
(per IOPs)
$0.065 N/A N/A $.07
Pricing: Pay for what you Provision
Source: RightScaleAs of Feb 26, 2018

9. AWS
monthly cost
Azure
monthly cost
Google
monthly cost
IBM
monthly cost
Name of Services EBS Managed Disk Persistent Disk Block Storage
Magnetic
500 GB
$22.50 $21.76 $20.00 N/A
SSD
500 GB, 1000 IOPs
$50.00 $66.56
P20 – 2300 IOPs
$85.00
Includes 15,000
IOPs
$100.00
SSD
500 GB, 2000 IOPs
$192.50
PIOPs SSD
$66.56
P20 – 2300 IOPs
$85.00
Includes 15,000
IOPs
$175.00
SSD
500 GB, 5000 IOPs
$650.00
PIOPs SSD
$122.88
P30 – 5000 IOPs
$85.00
Includes 15,000
IOPs
$290.00
Snapshots
500 GB
$25.00 $25.00 $13.00 Info not available
Block/Disk Storage - Scenarios
Source: RightScaleAs of Feb 26, 2018

10. Overprovisioning
• Buying bigger disk than needed
• On AWS: Elastic EBS Volumes let you size up without detaching
HDD/Standard vs. SSD
• HDD/Standard will be less than half the cost of SSD
AWS PIOPs
• Gets expensive quickly
Google Local Disk vs Persistent Disk
• Local Disk must be bought in 375GB increments
• For smaller sizes, PD much cheaper
Buy only what you need
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11. Unattached Volumes
10
VM/Instance Volume
Instance with
volume attached
VM/Instance Volume
Instance is terminated
volume is unattached

12. Unattached Volumes: Not Once and Done
11

13. Automate Cleanup of Unattached Volumes
12
RightScale Automated
policy
Find volumes
unattached for more
than x days
Alert only or Alert and
Delete

14. SNAPSHOTS

15. AWS Azure Google IBM
Incremental snapshots Yes No - full disk only Yes Per block
Snapshot Redundancy
Multiple AZs in the
region
Multiple zones in the
region
Multiple locations Manual
Snapshots available
cross-region
Can copy across
regions
Can copy across
regions
Yes, within a project No info available
Snapshots
(per GB-month)
$0.050
On magnetic $0.050
On SSD $0.12
$0.026 No info available
Snapshots: Pay for What You Use
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Source: RightScaleAs of Feb 26, 2018

16. Incremental Snapshots on AWS
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17. Azure Backup
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Set backup policies
Different retention for
different types of
workloads
Pay for number of
VMs PLUS storage
costs
LRS or GRS options
on storage

18. Azure Backup Pricing: Instances + Storage
17

19. Example of Growing Snapshot Costs
18

20. Azure Recovery: Optimizing retention policies
19
Review backup
frequency
Different retention for
different types of
workloads
Review geo-redundant
vs locally redundant
Policies to alert for out
of range costs

21. Define how long to keep snapshots
Consider different retention policies for different environments
Automate cleanup
• RightScale automated policies for any cloud
• Azure Backup policies if you use that service
Ensure Old Snapshots are Deleted
20

22. OBJECT STORAGE

23. AWS Azure Google IBM
Service Name S3 Azure Storage (Blobs) Google Cloud Storage IBM Object Storage
Hot S3 Standard Hot Blob Storage GCS Standard
Cool
S3 Standard – Infrequent
Access
Cool Blob Storage GCS Nearline Vault
Min Storage
Time
30 days 30 days 30 days 30 days
First Byte
Latency
milliseconds milliseconds milliseconds Info not available
Cold (Archival) Glacier Archive Blob Storage GCS Coldline Cold Vault
Min Storage
Time
90 days 180 days 90 days 90 days
First Byte
Latency
select from minutes or hours <15 hours milliseconds Info not available
Object Storage - Hot vs Cool vs Cold
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Source: RightScaleAs of Feb 26, 2018

24. AWS Azure Google IBM
Service Name S3/Glacier Blob Storage GCS Object Storage
Hot Multi-Region
per GB-month
S3 Standard x2 $0.0460
Transfer $.0100
RA-GRS $0.0460
GRS/RA-GRS Transfer
$.0200
Multi-regional $0.0260
Transfer included
Cross-region $0.03
Hot Single Region
per GB-month
Standard $0.0230 LRS-Hot $0.0184 Regional $0.0200 Regional $0.022
Cool Single Region
per GB-month
Infrequent access $0.0125 LRS-Cool $0.0100 Nearline $0.0100 Reg. Vault $0.012
Cold Single Region
per GB-month
Glacier $0.0040 LRS-Archive $0.0020 Coldline $0.0070 Reg. Cold Vault 0.006
Object Storage - Prices
Source: RightScaleAs of Feb 26, 2018

25. Storage Costs by Cloud
24

26. Locally Redundant Storage (LRS) - Stores 3 copies of your storage, but local to
your datacenter only.
Zone Redundant Storage (ZRS) - Stores 3 copies of your storage in multiple
datacenters, but in the same region.
Geo Redundant Storage (GRS) - Stores 3 copies of your storage in primary region,
and other three copies stored in secondary region.
Read Access Geo Redundant Storage (RA-GRS) - Stores 3 copies of your
storage in primary region, and other three copies stored in secondary region. Read
access to secondary copy is available immediately.
Azure Storage Replication Explained
25

27. Azure Storage Pricing (GP v1 accounts)
26
Storage Capacity LRS ZRS CLASSIC
GRS RA-GRS
First 1 terabyte (TB) / month $0.0240 $0.0300 $0.0480 $0.0610
Next 49 TB
(1 to 50 TB) / month
$0.0236 $0.0295 $0.0472 $0.0599
Next 450 TB
(50 to 500 TB) / month
$0.0232 $0.0290 $0.0464 $0.0589
Next 500 TB
(500 to 1,000 TB) / month
$0.0228 $0.0285 $0.0456 $0.0579
Next 4,000 TB
(1,000 to 5,000 TB) / month
$0.0224 $0.0280 $0.0448 $0.0569
The above prices do not include the transactional costs to retrieve your block blob data.
*ZRS will go GA on Jun 1, 2018 and rates will change
2x LRS
pricing

28. • General Purpose v1
• Only support Hot Storage
• No ‘Cool’ or ‘Archival’ storage
• Higher storage costs
• Lower transaction costs
• General Purpose v2
• Support Hot/Cool/Archival Storage
• Lower storage costs
• Higher transaction costs
• Blob (Legacy)
• Support Hot/Cool/Cold Storage
• Only support Block blobs (not page blobs)
• Almost identical pricing to GPv2
• Migrate to GPv2
Azure Storage Accounts Explained
27

29. Azure Storage Pricing: GPv1 vs GPv2
28
Pricing (West US 2) GPv1 Hot GPv2 Hot GPv2 Cool GPv2 Cold
Per GB (first terabyte per month) $0.0480 $0.0368 $0.0200 $0.0040
Write Operations (per 10,000) $0.00036 $0.10 $0.20 $0.20
Read Operations (per 10,000) $0.00036 $0.00480 $0.01 $5
Data Retrieval (per GB) Free Free $0.01 $0.02
Data Write (per GB) Free Free Free Free

30. • Consider Hot/Cool/Cold
• Consider defining your data by how quickly you need it
• In Azure’s case, there are dramatic savings if you store for longer than
180 days and dont need that data for up to 15 hours
• What level of redundancy is needed?
• Can some data be easily reconstructed if lost
• On Azure, evaluate the type of storage account needed
• If you use high volumes of transactions or geo-replication bandwidth, don’t
use GP v2.
• Evaluate if have enough storage to benefits from the lower costs of GB
storage.
Summary: Saving on Object Storage
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31. DATABASE/DATA WAREHOUSE

32. Reserve the instances your RDS
DB will run on
Save up to 69% over On-Demand
rates
Reserved Instances for the
MySQL, MariaDB, PostgreSQL,
and Amazon Aurora database
engines as well as the “Bring your
own license” (BYOL) edition of the
Oracle database engine offer
instance size flexibility
AWS Reserved RDS
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33. Reserved Capacity for
DynamoDB (provisioned
throughput)
53% savings on 1Y reserved
76% savings on 3Y reserved
Indexed data storage, data
transfer and other charges are
still charged at on-demand rates
Amazon DynamoDB Reserved Capacity
32

34. Amazon ElastiCache Reserved Nodes
33
Reserved Cache nodes
Up to 52% savings for 1Y
Up to 70% savings for 3Y
Old instance families (t1, m1,
m2, c1) also have Light and
Medium utilization options

35. Amazon Redshift Reserved Instances
34
Reserved Instances
Up to 42% savings for 1Y
Up to 75% savings for 3Y
Choose from No Upfront (1Y
only), Partial Upfront, All Upfront.
More upfront gives more savings

36. Azure SQL Data Warehouse: Optimize Scale
35
Scale DWU up/down
on schedule or
pausing DW when not
in use
Use RightScale
automated policies to
request scale up or to
pause/un-pause

37. Contact sales@rightscale.com for more info
Q&A
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