The Great Cloud $$ Escape

Organizations and teams increasingly rely on cloud resources for their computing needs, but the convenience of cloud computing isn’t cheap. Cloud cost management has become a critical issue for many companies, as their cloud bills quickly spiral out of control. These organizations struggle with cloud cost optimization, often paying for resources that are no longer in use, or over-provisioning resources.

With great convenience, comes a big fat bill!

To help you avoid some of the pitfalls (and added costs) of the cloud, here are some ways that you can regain control of your cloud spend.

?Goal Vs System

There are many considerations when choosing which option to pick as a strategy: Goal versus System.

Goal: In this strategy, a goal is fixed and we drive efforts towards achieving the goal

System: In this strategy, a system is designed and put in place to continuously monitor a set of metrics of data and steps are taken to maintain progress.

In our case, we leaned towards creating a sustainable and repeatable system rather than chasing the goal to reduce overall cost.

In my article Building execution muscle, I discussed a 4-step process. It’s time to put it to the test again!?

Watch Towers -?

• We used CloudQuery to create a data pipeline into the Grafana Dashboards so we could clearly see what we are consuming from the three clouds services.
• We could clearly see the consumption on a daily, weekly and monthly basis across clouds, accounts and teams.

Driving Conversations -?

• We? started communicating more of our findings, spending, and the issues we faced while digging into the cloud bill.
• People became aware and we received some great feedback on the approach. We ended up making it everybody’s concern and accountability, so together we could move much faster.

Measure What matters -?

• When you start digging into your cloud bill, there are many signals and numbers to look at and be aware of. We started to single out metrics that will gave us higher and quicker yield.
• Usage metrics per dept and task was a great signal to help keep the cost under control. Machine types and their utilization was another great metric that pointed us in a specific direction.
• Orphan resources - Orphan resources are those resources in your cloud environment that are no longer in use, or have been forgotten about. Orphan volumes, specifically, can be a big cost driver. To save costs, it is important to regularly audit your cloud environment to identify and delete these orphan resources.
• Stopped instances - When an instance is stopped, you may assume that you are no longer being charged for it. However, you may still be billed for attached volumes, which can quickly add up. Make sure you backup or delete these volumes to reduce costs.
• Changed default provisioned configuration - We changed the configuration of default provisioning. People could still make the change, but we wanted them to acknowledge the decision that they need a bigger instance.

Fix the lego block -?

• We took action on implementing changes at the lowest unit, because? if we are able to control that, we will always be able to tap the overall spend.
• We created more metadata around instances, which helped us to roll up the information to teams and departments, and hence set budgets and alerts for specific departments to act on.
• Tagging - Tagging is essential for tracking what is responsible for cloud spend. It is important to ensure that all resources, including attached volumes, are properly tagged so that you can easily track and allocate costs.
• Policies - we implemented various policies in different accounts/projects which gave us better controls on the provisioning of resources.

With this 4 point approach, we were able to identify what needs an attention now versus what we need to change as a process to gain control over our cloud spend. Getting rid of Orphan resources needed immediate attention while creating more metadata around resources was a process change to bring second level of details.

Strategies for Cutting Spending and Increasing Efficiency

01 Invest in a middle layer - Investing in a middle layer, to deploy resources in the cloud, can provide a robust policy and governance framework for cost optimisation. This can help automate the process of identifying and deleting orphan resources, detaching or deleting attached volumes, and ensuring proper tagging.

02 Implement policies - Implementing policies can also help with cost optimisation. For example, you can set policies to automatically stop instances when they are not in use, or to resize instances based on usage patterns.

03 Monitor and analyse costs - It is important to regularly monitor and analyse your cloud costs to identify areas where you can save money. Cloud cost management tools can help you do this by providing insights into your spending patterns and suggesting cost optimisation strategies.

By following these tips, you can take control of your cloud costs and optimise your spending to achieve better ROI.

Why Automation is critical:

Automation plays a crucial role in cloud cost optimisation, particularly when it comes to visibility and actions.

1. Visibility - Automation can help provide visibility into your cloud environment, allowing you to identify orphan resources, monitor spending, and detect cost-saving opportunities. For example, you can use automation to generate reports on cloud usage and costs, or to set up alerts when spending exceeds a certain threshold.
2. Actions - Automation can also help you take actions to optimize cloud costs. For example, you can use automation to automatically delete orphan resources, resize instances based on usage patterns, or schedule instances to turn off outside of business hours.
3. Cost optimisation tools - There are many cost optimization tools available to help you automate your processes. These tools typically use machine learning algorithms to analyze your cloud usage and spending patterns, and provide recommendations for cost optimization. Some tools can also automate the implementation of these recommendations.

By leveraging automation, you can achieve greater visibility into your cloud environment and take steps to manage costs in real-time. This helps you save time and money, while also ensuring that your cloud environment is running efficiently and effectively.

Conclusion:

Overall, cloud cost optimization is a critical consideration for any organization consuming cloud resources. By addressing challenges such as orphan resources, stopped instances, and poor tagging practices, and leveraging the power of automation, organizations can save money and increase the value of their cloud investments. Through rapid action, and implementing the strategies discussed in this article, organizations can ensure they are optimizing their cloud costs and maximizing their ROI.