How Can I Reduce My Cloud Costs?
Moving to the cloud can be a difficult task. However, your work does not end once you have finished transferring your last app to your new cloud. The real work has only just begun in 95% of cases. You want to improve your operational performance while saving money, right? And you know it's not easy: large amounts of data are constantly coming in at high speeds.
If you do not control every aspect of the application lifecycle in a consumption-based model, it will work against you. You can quickly lose control. As a result, you must optimize your process to ensure that your product is the best it can be for the greatest number of people. Do you want to know how to cut your cloud costs? I've put together six top tips for making the most of the cloud. Simply keep reading. The most fundamental tip is to know what is in your estate. What are you currently spending your money on? Who makes those budgetary decisions? Examine where the money is going. When businesses decide to use cloud storage, they frequently migrate their data to the new system and then forget about it. But they have no idea what will happen in the future.
Of course, you can't constantly improve performance if you don't know how you're doing now. The first step is to instill awareness of your processes throughout your estate.
6 Best Practices to Reduce Your Cloud Costs
1. Make Use of Tags
Tags are required to easily sort your data. Tags are pieces of information that tell you who owns something, what it is supposed to do, and how important it is. But don't make too many tags. People frequently use the account name as a tag, which results in redundant tag values. One company I know used 9,000 tags - far too many! The best option is to use five to ten tags that are focused on value, business contacts, importance, and the environment. Choose three to five of the most important entries and add them to your quick search.
2. Tailor to Your Needs
One of the most common mistakes businesses make when migrating to the cloud is purchasing more storage space than they require.
Make an effort to downsize!
You should tailor your servers to your specific requirements. Examine benchmarks, track performance, and gradually scale down until you find the ideal size. The same is true for storage capacities. The amount of storage provided is billed, not the amount of storage used. So don't think, "Oh, I'll provide a 5-terabyte hard drive because maybe I'll use it later." That is a huge blunder! You might never use it, wasting company money!
3. Remove Any Unnecessary Files
Do you really need to keep every file you've ever made?
If necessary, you can do this on your personal computer, but doing so on your company's cloud costs money. When considering different types of storage, you must also strike the right balance between functionality and cost. For example, you probably don't want to keep archived data on an expensive SSD. There is a much less expensive alternative. In fact, there are numerous types of cloud storage, ranging from the ultra-fast P30s, which are expensive, to cold archive storage, which is much less expensive.
Remember that you can optimize the rest of your assets, but storage will consume a larger portion of your budget.
4. Zombies Must Be Eliminated
Zombies are entertaining in movies, but not so much in the cloud. Zombies in the cloud are resources that consume your budget but provide little value.
A zombie could be a forgotten server from earlier stages of testing, for example. One thing in common with zombies is that no one knows what they are for or who owns them. But, for whatever reason, the zombies are on the run, and they are costing you money! This is utter nonsense. If you suspect you have zombies, disable them for a week. This is the quickest and easiest way to identify the owner, as the owner will usually contact you to inquire about the whereabouts of the file. If no one objects, it is likely that these resources were unnecessary from the start.
5. Purchase at Predetermined Prices
Reserved Instances (RI)—a reservation of resources and capacity for a set period of time, usually a year or two—are yet another way to improve cloud performance.
Purchasing RI is a significant upfront investment that can save you money in the long run.
On the other hand, if not done correctly, it can eliminate your ROI and even cost you money. Companies are drawn to RI because of the potential value. However, many businesses commit to RIs without first determining their storage requirements. They anticipate that RI will save them money, but they soon discover that they underestimated their demand. If a company purchases a RI on a 2XL machine only to discover that their architecture only requires a medium or a large, they have now committed to an expensive machine that they do not require for a year or more.
It is possible to save money with a RI, but you must first have a thorough understanding of your company's requirements!
6. Monitor Your Metrics
Yes, it's a cliche, but it's still true: in order to succeed at anything, you must pay attention to your metrics. Your clouds are no different. You must identify the key performance indicators (KPI) that are most important to your business. Determine what you want to track and why: this could be a base cost per CPU, RAM per gigabyte, or any other business-related metric. Also, keep in mind that as you and your team become more comfortable with the cloud, you will begin to use it more frequently. This means you may incur additional expenses. However, if you control all of your KPIs, you can still be successful.
Cloud cost optimization is critical because it can easily get out of control. If you need our help we are an email away. Contact us today for a free consultation and we’ll help you get your Cloud costs under control!