What are the best tools for monitoring and optimizing your cloud costs?

By monitoring costs, organizations can identify opportunities to optimize resources and reduce waste. This includes shutting down unused resources, choosing more cost-effective instance options, and adjusting capacity as needed. Cost visibility is essential for calculating return on investment (ROI) in cloud computing initiatives. It enables organizations to assess if they are getting the maximum value from cloud investments and identify areas for improvement.

Google cloud platform provides tools for monitoring and optimizing your cloud costs.wirh tools like Billing Reports and cost Forecasting, you can gain insights into your spending patterns and identity areas where cost optimization is possible.

Never used cloud kept records on hard drives and NEVER the sever - reason being an Expat you are expendable but you keep the info

Gaining visibility into your cloud costs is crucial. Tools that offer detailed reports and analytics help you understand spending patterns by categorizing costs by service, project, or department. This insight is invaluable for budgeting and forecasting, enabling data-driven decisions for efficient cloud budget allocation.

Tools like AWS Cost Explorer, Azure Cost Management, and Google Cloud's Cost Management provide detailed insights into your cloud spending. They allow you to visualize your costs, identify spending patterns, and allocate costs to different projects or departments.

Tracking resource utilization helps identify areas for potential cost reduction. Here's how: ? Cloud Provider Monitoring Services: Each cloud provider offers monitoring services to track resource usage: o AWS CloudWatch: Provides detailed monitoring metrics for various AWS services, allowing you to identify underutilized resources. o Azure Monitor: Offers comprehensive monitoring capabilities for Azure resources, including CPU, memory, and network utilization metrics. It also includes Network Watcher for monitoring and diagnosing network issues within Azure. o Google Cloud Monitoring: Enables you to track resource usage metrics like CPU, network traffic, and disk I/O for cost optimization.

Accurate usage tracking is key to optimizing cloud costs. Monitoring tools that provide real-time usage data can alert you to demand spikes, indicating inefficiencies or the need for scaling. Analyzing this data helps adjust resource allocation to match actual usage patterns, leading to significant cost savings. Understanding usage trends also aids in negotiating better terms with cloud service providers or deciding when to switch to a different plan or provider.

Nope I keep my data to myself - as an Expat you know its an icy bridge you walk on sure good money - but just incase protect yourself never save all your work on the company server - cost one company $6 mill as I had the reasons why

Tools such as CloudHealth by VMware, Cloudability, and Densify offer robust usage tracking capabilities. They help you understand how different services are being used, identify underutilized resources, and ensure you're not paying for what you don't need.

Regular resource optimization plays an important role in cloud cost savings. Using preemptible and spot instances for development environments, rightsizing resources and utilizing committed use contracts for cost savings, fine-tuning application and database servers, and choosing the right and cost-effective processors can all help reduce costs in your environment. Other than this, we can also utilize cloud services like Azure advisor, Azure cost management, budgets and alerts.

A good practice to optimize resources would be to work with Automatic Scaling. Configure automatic scaling policies to add or remove instances based on current workload. Consider increasing or decreasing instance capacity as needed to meet performance requirements. Pay attention to data storage; use scalable storage according to needs and move less accessed data to more economical storage tiers. Automate backups and archiving to ensure data recovery and optimize storage usage.

Roll your sleeves up get stuck in and look after your labour force and pass on as much knowledge that you can to enhance our industry- something that multinationals don't get!

Tools like Turbonomic, RightScale (now part of Flexera), and ParkMyCloud can automatically identify and recommend optimizations for your cloud resources. They help in rightsizing instances, identifying idle resources, and optimizing storage costs.

Resource optimization comes up as the foremost solution for monitoring and improving cloud expenditure efficiency. This can be achieved by identifying resources that are not being fully utilized, implementing recommendations for optimizing resource allocation, and automating the termination of resources that are not being used.

Automated scaling tools are crucial for efficient cloud cost management, as they adjust resource allocation based on current demand, preventing overpayment for idle capacity. These tools, such as AWS Auto Scaling, Azure AutoScale, Google Cloud Autoscaler, Kubernetes Horizontal Pod Autoscaler (HPA), and RightScale (Flexera), dynamically manage scaling up or down by setting specific parameters, which handle unpredictable workloads or traffic spikes without manual intervention. This approach not only saves money but also ensures that applications remain responsive and available during peak demand times, thereby balancing performance and cost-efficiency effectively.

If you use these tools - automated - they do not pick up co-ordination issues potential value engineering opportunities you need to completely know and advise I know it takes longer - but I was taught that way and saved millions

AWS Auto Scaling, Google Cloud's Autoscaler, and Azure Autoscale are essential tools for dynamically adjusting your cloud resources based on demand. They help in maintaining performance while optimizing costs by scaling resources up or down as needed.

Automating resource scaling based on demand ensures you only pay for what you use. Here's how to achieve this: ? Cloud Provider Autoscaling Services: All major cloud providers offer built-in autoscaling features: o AWS Auto Scaling: Allows automatic scaling of resources like EC2 instances based on predefined metrics like CPU utilization. o Azure Autoscaling: Provides automatic scaling of Azure resources (VMs, App Services) based on custom scaling rules. This includes Azure Virtual Machine Scale Sets, which allow you to scale entire groups of VMs up or down based on metrics like CPU, memory, or network traffic. o Google Cloud Scaling: Enables automatic scaling of Google Compute Engine VMs based on CPU, memory, or custom metrics.

Budget management can minimize operational costs and reduce resource waste, ensuring that cloud resources are used efficiently to maximize return on investment. It helps ensure that expenditures comply with internal policies and external regulations, maintaining the financial security of the organization.

The best tools for monitoring and optimizing cloud costs include AWS Cost Explorer, Azure Cost Management and Billing, Google Cloud's Cost Management tools, and third-party solutions like CloudHealth by VMware, CloudCheckr, and Spot by NetApp. These tools offer detailed cost analytics, budgeting capabilities, and recommendations for cost savings through rightsizing resources, identifying idle assets, and leveraging reserved instances and discounts.

Budget Management: Setting budgets and receiving alerts can prevent cloud spending surprises. Explore these tools: ? Cloud Provider Budget Management: All major cloud providers offer budget management features: AWS Budgets: Set custom budgets for AWS services and receive notifications when spending approaches your limit. Azure Budgets: Define budgets for Azure resources and configure alerts to track spending against your budget goals. Azure Budgets also supports reservations and spending forecasts to help plan expenses. Google Cloud Billing Budgets: Create budgets for Google Cloud projects, services, or SKUs.

Tools such as AWS Budgets, Azure Cost Management + Billing, and Google Cloud's Budgets and Alerts enable you to set custom budget thresholds and receive alerts when your spending approaches or exceeds these limits. This proactive approach helps prevent unexpected cost overruns.

Um ponto de aten??o na gest?o Or?amentária é efetuar uma análise unitária dos custos junto ao acompanhamento periódico pois demonstra claramente o quanto eficiente em custos a empresa está frente aos planos or?amentários estabelecidos.

In a recent experience, I used AWS Cost Explorer, an incredible AWS tool that provides detailed visibility of costs and usage of services. This allowed me to create custom reports and set budget alerts. It enabled analysis of costs by service, instance, region, and tag, providing forecasts of future spending based on historical usage and trends.

Azure cost management-cost analysis is one such tool which provides cost forecasting bases on historical resource usage. We can add filter as well to forecast cost by services. It also can be customized.

Tools like CloudForecast, CloudCheckr, and Kubecost provide cost forecasting capabilities, allowing you to predict future spending based on historical data and current usage trends. This helps in planning and budgeting more effectively.

See above its enough of an insite to commercial management- I did Baha Mar, Dubai, Amsterdam, Doha, Baku all multi million jobs so I get a bit tired of these surveys - I have offered to train but alas - its not easy being an Expat!

Integration with Existing Tools: Ensure that the cost management tools integrate well with your existing cloud infrastructure and other management tools. User-Friendliness: Choose tools that are easy to use and understand, so your team can quickly adapt and start using them effectively. Support and Documentation: Opt for tools that offer comprehensive support and documentation to assist you in maximizing their benefits. Customizability: Look for tools that allow customization to fit your specific business needs and provide tailored reports and insights. Security and Compliance: Ensure that the tools comply with your organization's security policies and any relevant regulatory requirements, providing secure handling of cost and usage data.