I bet you are paying too much for your cloud services. Why I think I know that? Because I guess everyone does. The only person that is not paying too much, is the person not using cloud services. What do you think?
Do you know someone that was suprised by his cloud bill? I guess everyone knows a story. I had a customer that used a lot of SQL databases in Azure. As he had a multi-client service and separated data in databases this lead to increasing cloud bills as more customers were onboarded to their solution. As I saw the metrics for the databases we discussed possible solutions and finally threw the databases into an Elastic Pool which shares performance over multiple databases. Saving ~80%. That’s just one small example of an optimized service which is a little bit more advanced. But there are easy steps to follow for identifiying low hanging fruits.
How to getting started with cost optimization
When it comes to optimizing cloud costs almoste everyone thinks about commitments like reserved instances or saving plans. But that’s only a small part of the story. Optmizing costs does not necessarily mean reducing costs but to lower costs for a specific business outcome. For example the cost to find and onboard a new customer. When you are at the beginning of your cloud optimization journey you are good not do everything at the once, but to start in small steps. Here is an example of 7 steps you can take to start with your cost optimization.
Take 7 steps to optimize your cloud in Azure
- Azure Cost Optimization Part 0 - Are you paying too much for your cloud?
- Azure Cost Optimization Part 1 - Know your costs
- Azure Cost Optimization Part 2 - Stay alert
- Azure Cost Optimization Part 3 - Identify cloud waste
- Azure Cost Optimization Part 4 - Rightsize your resources
- Azure Cost Optimization Part 5 - Turn off if not needed
- Azure Cost Optimization Part 6 - Start small with commitments
- Azure Cost Optimization Part 7 - Bring cloud cost optimization into your organization
Stay tuned! I will dive into each topic in a series of blog posts. The first will be available soon and cover the first phase, where we are diving into our past costs to get a feeling of it.
Cost optimization is no one-stop-shop, it’s a process
You do not optimize your costs once and it’s done. It is an ongoing process. You are good to go with the steps above. Start over from the beginning and optimize every part in just small steps. Start over when you are at the end. Over time this will make you better in every disciplin and mature. Embrace cloud and use the flexibility and agility, scale up and down and get used to pay-as-you-go.
Conclusion
You could prevent paying too much for your cloud if you are following the steps above. Start your cost optimization in small steps and try out one thing after the other. Iterate over every step again and again for becoming the expert in the relevant areas. Take care not to doing too much at a time as this could overextend your organization.
Happy optimization!