6 Ways AWS Can Help You Evaluate and Manage New System Costs
The fifth pillar of AWS is cost optimisation and focuses on making sure you don’t spend more than you need to. This principle also applies to cost analyses of new services.
Choosing the correct service can make a significant difference in your overall costs. Amazon offers many services at varying price points that can increase your reliability and performance efficiency, improve your security and help you achieve operational excellence.
However, it’s essential to ensure achieving the first four pillars doesn’t overwhelm your budget. The Well-Architected Framework has six best practices that can help you evaluate new services for cost and efficiency.
1. Identify Organisation Requirements
You should identify your organisation requirements for each of the five pillars of the Well-Architected Framework. Work with members of your team who are in product management, applications, development and operations, management and finance.
Determine what your requirements are in terms of each pillar, weighting them to find the balance between cost and the other pillars.
2. Break Down Your Workload
Break down your workload into components and analyse the cost and importance of each one individually. Include all parts, even the small or old ones.
Prioritise your components by cost and importance to prepare for the analysis.
3. Analyse The Components
Work your way down the list of components, only moving on after you have completed a thorough analysis.
For the high priority components, also analyse the options that could improve them. Determine how much they would cost, how much they would benefit the component, and what their long-term impact would be.
For lower priority components, determine what if any improvements you could implement, and if those improvements would push the component into the high priority category.
4. Find Cost-Effective Licensing
First, look into open-source software to eliminate licensing costs. Amazon has several options like Amazon Linux or Amazon Aurora. If you can’t find appropriate open-source software, choose software that is bound to output or outcomes. Instead of paying per CPU, you will only be paying for what you use.
Check historical prices of the provider to see if they regularly increase or have remained stable. You want to ensure that this software will stay in your budget in the future.
5. Select Your Components
Once you’ve finished analysing, you can select your components. Be sure to prioritise the cost analysis when making your final choices.
6. Perform Cost Analysis
Regularly perform a cost analysis of your workload, since it can change over time.
As your workload grows, you might want to bring on more managed services like Amazon RDS or Amazon DynamoDB that will reduce your overhead and enable you to focus on other aspects of your business.
Work With an AWS Partner
If you want help analysing services, an AWS Partner like WOLK can help you with your cost analysis and ensure your company is compliant with the Well-Architected Framework.