This presentation shares fast and effective ways to cut your AWS spend, time and effort in less time than it takes to make your morning cup of coffee. For more best practices: http://bit.ly/10-best-practices-AWS-cost

1. Tips for
Keeping Your
AWS Cloud
In Check

2. Regardless of your organization’s size,
no one wants to waste money on
unused cloud services and resources.
When your AWS costs become
unmanageable, it may be time for some
housekeeping.
Whether you’re in desperate need of
quick-hit instant savings, or looking
long-term to maximize utilization of
your environment, there are fast and
effective ways to cut your AWS spend,
time and effort in less time than it takes
to make your morning cup of coffee.

3. Check If There are Hidden
Unused EBS Volumes in
your AWS Environment
Maybe you’ve accumulated a
bunch of EBS Volumes no longer
attached to an instance. That’s ok -
it happens to all of us, and these
are easy to rack up unnoticed. But
you don’t want to pay for them.

4. Check If There are Hidden
Unused EBS Volumes in
your AWS Environment
TAKE ACTION: Best practice is to
delete a volume when it has been
unattached for two weeks, as it is
unlikely the same volume will be
utilized again.

5. Ok, well if you’re already in there, how about underutilized EBS volumes?
So your workloads have changed and now you have active volumes
with over-provisioned IOPS. No sweat. You can easily ID these
potentially wasted volumes and terminate them or choose a more
appropriate storage option.

6. Ok, well if you’re already in there, how about underutilized EBS volumes?
TAKE ACTION: If a volume is attached to an instance and barely has
any read/writes on that volume, the instance is either inactive or the
volume is unnecessary. These are good candidates to flag for
rightsizing evaluation.

7. And Don’t Forget Those
Underutilized EC2
Instances Too...
Do you have overprovisioned EC2 Instances? If so, it’s time to give
them the pink slip. By identifying and decommissioning running
instances with a low average and maximum CPU utilization, you could
be saving even more by giving these slackers the boot or
rightsizing them.

8. And Don’t Forget Those
Underutilized EC2
Instances Too...
TAKE ACTION: A good starting place for rightsizing is to look for
instances that have an average CPU < 5% and maximum CPU < 20%
for 30 days. Instances that fit this criteria are viable candidates for
rightsizing or termination.

9. So you’re an AWS rock star and have purchased Reserved Instances (RIs). You’ve
already locked in awesome savings, but maybe some of those RIs are unused or
underutilized. Since you’ve already paid for them, you definitely want to ensure they
aren’t wasted! There are modifications you can make, and don't forget
they’re free of charge, to ensure the RIs you’ve purchased are used.
Find Unused/Underutilized Reserved Instances a New Home

10. TAKE ACTION: Once purchased, RIs can be modified in several ways
at no additional cost: switching availability zones within the same region, altering the
instance type within the same family (this includes both splitting & merging instance
types), switching between EC2 Classic & Virtual Private Cloud, changing
the account that benefits from the RI purchase.
Find Unused/Underutilized Reserved Instances a New Home

11. Identify Assets To Put on a
“Lights on Lights off” Schedule
Outside of production, most of your
instances aren’t being used 24x7x365,
so why would you want to pay for
them to run all the time? Look for test
and development infrastructure that
can be turned off at night and on the
weekends, this can save between 488
to 592 instance hours per month.

12. TAKE ACTION: Set a target for weekly
hours that non-production systems
should run. If an instance is turned off
between 5pm and 9am on weekdays
and stopped weekends and holidays,
then total billable hours per month
would range from 152 to 184 hours
per instance.
Identify Assets To Put on a
“Lights on Lights off” Schedule

13. Final
Thoughts
Notice a trend? The simplest way to keep your cloud in check is to
continuously optimize it. This is a lot easier when you have a tool that
can help you automate and continuously monitor your AWS
environment. And remember, it's not just about cost, but usage and
efficiency as well. The cloud was designed to be easy, so managing it
should also be easy. Don't worry, we've got your back.
So don’t walk, RUN to learn more tips for
keeping your cloud in check:
http://bit.ly/10-best-practices-AWS-cost