This interview is part of the Simplyblock Cloud Commute Podcast, available on Youtube, Spotify, iTunes/Apple Podcasts, Pandora, Samsung Podcasts, and our show site.
In this installment, we're talking to Cristian Magherusan-Stanciu from AutoSpotting, a company helping to cost-optimize their AWS EC2 spent by automatically supplying matching workloads with spot instances. Cristian is talking about how spot instances work, how you can use them to save up to 60% of your EC2 cost, as well as how tools like ChatGPT, CoPilot, and AI Assistant help you writing (better) code. See more information below on what AWS cost optimization is, what the components of cloud storage pricing are and how simplyblock can help with cloud cost optimization.
Key Learnings
What is AWS cost optimization?
AWS cost optimization involves strategies and tools to reduce and manage the costs associated with using Amazon Web Services. Key components include:
Right-Sizing of Instances: Adjusting instance types and sizes based on actual usage patterns.
Reserved Instances and Savings Plans: Committing to long-term usage to benefit from reduced rates. For more information see our blog post on the AWS Enterprise Discount Program (EDP).
Auto Scaling: Automatically adjusting resource capacity to meet demand without over-provisioning.
Monitoring and Analysis: Using tools like AWS Cost Explorer and Trusted Advisor to monitor usage and identify savings opportunities.
Resource Tagging: Implementing tags to track and allocate costs effectively.
Use reseller programs like DoiT Flexsave™ that provide higher flexibility in pricings.
Look at alternative providers of certain features, like elastic block storage.
These strategies help organizations maximize their AWS investments while maintaining performance and scalability. AWS provides a suite of management tools designed to monitor application costs and identify opportunities for modernization and right-sizing. These tools enable seamless scaling up or down, allowing you to operate more cost-effectively in an uncertain economy. By leveraging AWS, you can better position your organization for long-term success.
What are the components of cloud storage pricing?
Cloud storage pricing is typically composed of several components:
Storage Capacity: The amount of data stored, usually measured in gigabytes (GB) or terabytes (TB).
Data Transfer: Costs associated with moving data in and out of the storage service.
Access Frequency: Pricing can vary based on how often data is accessed (e.g. frequent vs. infrequent access tiers).
Operations: Charges for operations like data retrieval, copying, or listing files.
Data Retrieval: Costs associated with retrieving data from storage, especially from archival tiers.
Replication and Redundancy: Fees for replicating data across regions for durability and availability.
Performance and Throughput Requirements: IOPS (Input Output Operations per Second) define how many storage operations can be performed per second on a given device. Cloud providers charge for high-performance storage that exceeds the included IOPS.
It’s important to thoroughly understand the components of cloud storage pricing in order to better understand how to optimize your cloud costs. This is important for several reasons including reducing redundant expenses, ensuring optimal allocation of cloud resources to prevent over-provisioning and under-utilization, allowing scalability and investing in other areas to enhance overall competitiveness.
How can Simplyblock help with cloud cost optimization?
Simplyblock aids in cloud cost optimization by providing high-performance, low-latency elastic storage which combines the speed of local disks with the flexibility and features of SAN (Storage Area Networks) in a cloud-native environment. Simplyblock storage solutions are seamlessly integrated with Kubernetes and provide zero downtime scalability. A storage cluster that grows with your needs. More importantly, simplyblock provides cost efficiency gains of 60% or more over Amazon EBS. Calculate your savings with simplyblock now.