Intended for customers who have (or will have) thousands of instances on AWS, this session is about reducing the complexity of managing costs for these large fleets so they run efficiently. Attendees will learn about common roadblocks that prevent large customers from cost optimizing, tools they can use to efficiently remove those roadblocks, and techniques to monitor their rate of cost optimization. The session will include a case study that will talk in detail about the millions of dollars saved using these techniques. Customers will learn about a range of templates they can use to quickly implement these techniques, and also partners who can help them implement these templates.

1. © 2016, Amazon Web Services, Inc. or its Affiliates. All rights reserved.
July 28, 2016
Cost Optimization at Scale:
Building and Realizing the
Economic Case for the AWS Cloud
Meredith Jones
Principal, Business Development
Cloud Economics

2. What to expect….
We will introduce our approach for building
the business case for moving to the cloud
and share tips from some of our most
innovative customers who are able to
successfully architect for cost optimization
in order to realize the economics of the
AWS Cloud.

3. In the beginning . . .
…there was TCO

4. What is TCO?
Definition: Comparative total cost of ownership analysis (acquisition
and operating costs) for running an infrastructure environment end-to-end
on-premises vs. on AWS.
Used for:
1) Comparing the costs of running an entire infrastructure environment or
specific workload on-premises or in a co-location facility vs. on AWS
2) Budgeting and building the business case for moving to AWS

5. So how do we do it?
≠

6. TCO = acquisition costs + operations costs
Hardware—server, rack
chassis PDUs, Tor switches
(+maintenance)
Software—OS,
virtualization licenses
(+maintenance)
Facilities cost
Hardware—storage disks,
SAN/FC switches
Storage admin costs
Network hardware—LAN
switches, load balancer
bandwidth costs
Network admin costs
Server admin virtualization admin4
The diagram doesn’t include every cost item. For example, software costs can include database,
management, and middle-tier software costs. Facilities cost can include costs associated with upgrades,
maintenance, building security, taxes, and so on. IT labor costs can include security admin and application
admin costs.
Space Power Cooling
Facilities cost
Space Power Cooling
Facilities cost
Space Power Cooling
Server costs
Storage costs
Network costs
IT labor costs
1
2
3
illustrative

7. Resources to get you started
AWS TCO Calculator
https://awstcocalculator.com
Case studies and research
http://aws.amazon.com/economics/

8. What’s missing from a traditional TCO?
Economic Criteria Category
Infrastructure Comparison
Capacity Planning Benefits
Financial Benefits of Innovation
Cost Avoidance
Workforce Productivity
Accelerated Time To Value/Market
Cost to Achieve (Migration, Platform, Training)
Legacy Constraints
Included Partially Included Not Included

9. Lowering TCO Through cost optimization
On-
Premises
Lift & Shift Instance Right-
Sizing
Improved
Elasticity
Measure,
Monitor,
Improve
Optimized EC2 Storage
Optimization
Serverless
Architecture
Managed
Services
True AWS
Optimized
Traditional TCO Comparisons

10. So you’re feeling pretty good.

11. Until your CFO shows up with the bill.

12. Cost optimization is…
going from…
to…
pay for what you use
pay for what you need

13. Where do you start?

14. The four pillars of cost optimization
Right-sizing Reserved
Instances
Increase
elasticity
Measure,
monitor, and
improve

15. Right-sizing
Right-sizing
• Selecting the cheapest instance available
while meeting performance requirements
• Looking at CPU, RAM, storage, and network
utilization to identify potential instances that
can be downsized
• Leveraging Amazon CloudWatch metrics and
setting up custom RAM metrics
Rule of thumb: Right size, then reserve.
(But if you’re in a pinch, reserve first.)

16. Reserved Instances
Commitment level
1 year
3 year
AWS services offering RIs
Amazon EC2
Amazon RDS
Amazon DynamoDB
Amazon Redshift
Amazon ElastiCache
* Dependent on specific AWS service, size/type, and region

17. Reserved Instances
Step 1: RI Coverage
• Cover always-on resources.
Step 2: RI Utilization
• Leverage RI flexibility to increase utilization.
• Merge and split RIs as needed.
Rule of thumb: Target 70–80% always-on
coverage and 95% RI utilization rate.

18. Increase elasticity
Turn off nonproduction instances
• Look for dev/test, nonproduction instances that
are running always-on and turn them off.
Autoscale production
• Use Auto Scaling to scale up and down based
on demand and usage (for example, spikes).
Rule of thumb: Shoot for 20–30% of Amazon EC2
instances running on demand to be able to
handle elasticity needs.

19. Using right-sizing and elasticity to lower cost
More smaller instances vs. fewer larger instances
29 m4.large @ $0.12 /hr
$2,505.60 / mo*
59 t2.medium @ $0.052/hr
$2,208.96 / mo*
*Assumes Linux instances in the US-East (N. Virginia) Region at 720 hours
per month

20. Putting it all together: case study

21. Challenge:
Minimizing unit costs
during a period of massive
growth.
A consistent measure of
CPU processing power
Elastic compute unit
(ECU)

22. The growth challenge
August 2014
August 2015
584 ECU
1,192 ECU
2x
YoY Compute Growth
33%
decrease in monthly
EC2 costs!

23. Solving the growth challenge

24. Step 1: Right-size and update instances
m1 on demand
$0.07 per ECU
c4 on demand
$0.02 per ECU

25. The impact of right-sizing
70% reduction
in unit cost

26. Step 2: Reserve

27. The impact of reservations
30% reduction
In unit cost

28. Putting it together
85% reduction
in unit cost!

29. Sounds pretty easy, right?
Not really.
In reality, it is very complex.
• Scale
• Behavioral change
• Visibility
• Ownership

30. Cost optimization governance
(Remember the fourth pillar?)

31. Uncovering the cost optimization opportunities
1. Auto-tag resources.
2. Identify always-on nonprod.
3. Identify instances to downsize.
4. Recommend RIs to purchase.
5. Dashboard our status.
6. Report on savings.

32. AWS options

33. Reserved Instances and right-sizing options

34. Example: reasonable optimization dashboard

35. Creating a culture of cost transparency
Targets and metrics Cloud Competency
Center
AWS Enterprise
Support

36. Putting it all together

37. Where to start
Set up a Cloud
Competency Center
Bring in the right
tools
Use metrics to
reinforce behavior
Use partners to
accelerate!

38. Cycle of cost optimization
✔
✔
✔
✔✘
✘
✘
✘
$
$
$
$
$

39. Copyright ©2016 Cloudreach limited
Not if. When

40. Cloudreach AWS Services
Copyright ©2014 Cloudreach limited
Full life cycle
vision
Provide the infrastructure, tooling,
build & migration expertise and 24/7
Operations
Huge depth of
experience
Medium & large businesses /
All sectors / Multiple countries
Extensive
global reach
Operate across 7 countries, and
communicate in 30+ languages
On the shoulders
of giants
Premier Partner of AWS
Cloudreach was
founded in 2009
Born in the cloud
170+ AWS
Certifications
Including a dedicated 24/7 Ops team
which is ISO 27001 certified

41. Cloudreach AWS Services
Copyright ©2016 Cloudreach limited
Accountable cloud spend. Delivered within budget
Cloud Operations Solutions
Cloudreach Financial Optimization
• Strong governance framework to
ensure accountability and
• Deep insight into resource
consumption including support
for showback / chargeback
• Innovative tools to deliver
advanced optimization options
• Consultative led approach to
optimize spend to achieve budget

42. Cloudreach AWS Services
Copyright ©2014 Cloudreach limited
Case Study
Governance Services for Channel 4

43. Cloudreach AWS Services
Copyright ©2014 Cloudreach limited
● Channel 4, as a publicly-owned and commercially-funded
business, has one of the most unique propositions in
broadcasting today
● The company saw the potential of the cloud very early on,
pioneering an on-demand video service as far back as
2006 and becoming early adopters of AWS
● Channel 4 is an organisation with its heart very much in the
cloud, and has long reaped the competitive benefits of this.
Case Study
Customer Overview

44. Cloudreach AWS Services
Copyright ©2014 Cloudreach limited
● C4 engaged Cloudreach to assist in gaining control of their
AWS estate
● An established early adopter within AWS, with 1000s of
instances split across multiple accounts
● Limited accountability for resources within estate - ‘who
owns what?’
● Spiraling cloud spend
Case Study
The Challenge

45. Cloudreach AWS Services
Copyright ©2014 Cloudreach limited
● Plan
○ Benchmark audit of estate
○ Stakeholders consulted, resource owners and capacity plans established,
cost model and accountability policy established
○ Remediation and ongoing management plan agreed
● Execute
○ Accountability policy and associated audit tooling implemented
○ Quick win remediation steps (EC2/RDS rightsizing and remediation,
orphan resource teardown) implemented to realise early savings
○ Tag-based EC2 instance scheduling implemented
● Maintain
○ Per-project dashboarding and optimization reporting adapted for customer
cost model and rolled out to end users
○ Ongoing Optimization Services provided to manage costs and provide
security oversight - taking the load off customer resources
Case Study
The Solution

46. Cloudreach AWS Services
Copyright ©2014 Cloudreach limited
Case Study
The Result
● > 36% reduction in estate monthly costs post initial engagement
(~$50,000 per calendar month)
● Robust framework, processes, tooling and support for continued cost
control and security management as ongoing Managed Service
Cloudreach
engage with
customer
Cloudreach
move to
service model
● Enhanced Optimization
Technologies delivered:
○ Reservation effectiveness
monitoring and repositioning
implemented
○ Scheduling extended to include
autoscaling groups, Redshift and
Aurora clusters
○ DynamoDB cost optimization

47. Thank you!
mej@amazon.com