CLOUD OPTIMIZATION

Our FinOps experts will meticulously examine your past and present billing records and utilization data to assess your spending priorities and existing cloud cost optimization strategies. This initial review will provide valuable insights into any challenges related to cloud optimization and highlight areas that require our attention.

Compute Resources Optimization

Compute resource right-sizing is another name for this step. All cloud providers provide different types of instance or compute resource types for various requirements. If you are using the wrong instance types or instance types with resources that you don’t need, you are wasting all that for nothing. We can help you choose the right instance type based on your requirements.

Instance Types examples:

• Amazon EC2 Instance Types
• Azure Virtual Machine series
• GCP Machine families

Note: We might also need to talk with your development teams to understand your application’s exact resource requirements and details.

Reserved Resources Allocation

Many public cloud providers offer Reserved Instances, often abbreviated as RIs. This practice involves purchasing or reserving cloud resources, particularly compute resources, for a duration of 1 to 3 years, as opposed to the standard pay-as-you-go pricing model. Leveraging RIs can result in substantial cost savings, with potential discounts of up to 70% to 80%.

Examples of RIs include:

• Azure Reserved Virtual Machine Instances
• Amazon EC2 Reserved Instances
• GCP: Consuming and managing reservations

In addition to infrastructure assessments, we may engage with your development teams to gain insights into ongoing projects and their respective durations. This collaboration helps us identify where RIs can be effectively utilized to optimize cost savings further.

Resource Elasticity Optimization

refers to the strategic management of cloud resources to align them with your specific requirements.

There are two primary categories under Elasticity:

• Time-based Elasticity: This aspect involves assessing and automating the activation of cloud resources based on specific time periods. Resources are activated when needed and deactivated when they are not in use.
• Volume-based Elasticity: In the context of volume-based elasticity, the focus is on fine-tuning your auto-scaling configurations. This involves a detailed review of your auto-scaling setups to ensure they are appropriately configured to match the precise resource demands at any given moment. The goal is to ensure that your scaling processes align seamlessly with the actual resource requirements.

Spot Instances Utilization

refers to the underutilized potential within cloud computing that many users are yet to explore. Spot instances, also known as Preemptible Virtual Machines, represent a unique opportunity in the cloud ecosystem. These instances are characterized by their short lifespan, typically lasting up to 24 hours, though this duration can vary depending on the cloud provider.

Spot instances are particularly well-suited for workloads that can tolerate interruptions, such as fault-tolerant tasks, testing environments, or batch processing jobs. Major cloud providers offer their own variations of spot instances, including Amazon EC2 Spot Instances, Azure Spot Virtual Machines, and GCP Preemptible Virtual Machines.

By integrating spot instances or preemptible virtual machines into your cloud infrastructure, substantial cost savings can be achieved, often in the range of 80% to 90% when compared to traditional compute engine costs. To unlock these savings, our team can collaborate with you to identify specific areas within your operations where spot instances can be effectively employed.

Storage Cost Optimization

Just as with compute engines, cloud service providers offer a range of storage solutions and storage classes to cater to diverse needs. Your spending on cloud resources may not be optimized if you’re not using the appropriate storage class.

Examples of storage classes are available across major cloud providers, including Amazon S3 Storage Classes, Azure Storage Services, and GCP Storage Classes.

Our Financial Operations (FinOps) team is equipped to evaluate your current allocation of storage resources. They can identify areas where improvements can be made and make the necessary adjustments to optimize your storage expenditure.

Implement Cost Management Practices

Every major cloud service provider offers built-in cost management tools, and the best part is that most of these tools are provided free of charge. However, despite the availability of these tools, a significant portion of cloud users fail to fully harness their capabilities due to a lack of expertise in cloud optimization practices. As an example, an essential cost management practice involves the use of cost allocation tags, but, based on our experience, only a minority of users effectively implement this technique.

Some instances of cost management tools and practices are:

• AWS provides Cloud Financial Management tools.
• Azure offers Azure Cost Management and Billing.
• Google Cloud Platform (GCP) provides Cost Management solutions.

Our team is ready to assist you in implementing these changes within your Financial Operations (FinOps). This will grant you deeper insights into the financial aspects of your cloud usage, simplifying FinOps management and, most importantly, helping you save money in the process.

Check Multi-Cloud Possibilities

Multi-cloud is not a technological innovation but rather a strategy that involves the use of multiple cloud providers simultaneously. This approach offers several advantages, such as avoiding dependency on a single vendor, enhancing flexibility, and accessing competitive pricing options.

Our team is well-equipped to assist you in crafting a more efficient and cost-effective multi-cloud strategy. Embracing a multi-cloud approach is a savvy investment strategy that can lead to greater operational efficiencies and benefits for your organization.

Provide FinOps Advices

Once we perform all the cloud optimization steps and strategies, we’ll get back to you with the details and give you advice on best practices, cloud optimization techniques, and procedures that you need to apply in the future to keep everything in order. We’d recommend passing these details to your staff, teams, and everyone who has access to your cloud. Because we believe an optimized cloud is a shared responsibility and we all need to work together to get the best results.