CloudGuild · Blog · Cheat sheets · Lessons · Certifications
AWS Cost Management — Optimize and control your AWS spending
Tools to analyze, manage, and optimize AWS costs effectively.
What it is
- AWS Cost Explorer: A service for visualizing and analyzing your AWS spending patterns over time.
- AWS Budgets: Allows you to set custom cost and usage budgets and receive alerts when you exceed them.
- AWS Compute Optimizer: Provides recommendations for optimizing your AWS compute resources based on your usage patterns.
When I reach for it
- To gain insights into your AWS spending and identify cost trends.
- When you want to enforce cost controls and receive alerts on budget thresholds.
- To optimize your EC2, Lambda, and Fargate resource configurations for cost efficiency.
Key architectural decisions
- Choose the right granularity for budgets (monthly, quarterly, etc.) based on your financial planning.
- Decide on the alerting mechanism (email, SNS) for budget thresholds to ensure timely notifications.
- Evaluate recommended instance types or sizes from Compute Optimizer to reduce costs without sacrificing performance.
Gotchas & exam traps
- Remember that Cost Explorer shows historical data; projections may not always reflect future costs accurately.
- Budgets are not retroactive; they only apply to future usage after being created.
- Compute Optimizer recommendations may not account for planned changes or future usage spikes.
The architect view
- Leverage AWS Cost Explorer for strategic financial planning and to inform resource allocation decisions.
- Use Budgets to enforce accountability within teams and departments.
- Regularly review Compute Optimizer recommendations to ensure you are not over-provisioning resources.