7 Helpful Tips to Optimize Cloud Costs for Small Businesses in Long Run

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Cloud computing is now a mainstream technology. Almost every business has implemented or is planning to implement cloud services in its IT infrastructure. Cloud computing offers many benefits to small businesses, but it’s not without its challenges. It isn’t surprising that 94% of all enterprises use cloud services.

One of the biggest challenges for any business using cloud services is controlling costs and implementing cloud cost optimization in the long run. This article will discuss some of the best ways to optimize your cloud costs without compromising on service quality.

Purchase Reserved Instances

Reserved instances are a great cloud cost optimizer and a good way to save money on AWS costs. According to AWS, users can avail of up to 75% discount on EC2 reserved instances compared to on-demand pricing. These instances allow you to pay upfront for a fixed term, so you know exactly how much it will cost you during that time frame. You also know the instance type, so there’s no worry over using less powerful hardware than planned.

Reserved instances are best suited for customers who use an instance type regularly and have predictable usage patterns (e.g., batch processing). If you don’t have a regular need for certain instance types and regions, then reservations may not make sense from an operational or financial standpoint.

If your business has diverse needs across regions and instance types or it’s hard to predict how much CPU or memory power it will need, purchasing reserved instances may not be the most cost-effective option for your cloud needs.

Terminate Unused Resources

One of the best ways to reduce cloud costs is by terminating unused resources. It is something that many people overlook. Many businesses have data centers and never really know how much they’re paying. But with cloud computing, you can get a detailed monthly report that shows how much money you spent on each service in the previous month.

If you’re not using it, terminate it. The less stuff you have running in your infrastructure, your bill will be smaller at the end of each month. If your business doesn’t need all those resources anymore because it’s grown into something larger than initially anticipated, go ahead and remove them so that no money goes towards keeping them around unnecessarily.

Schedule Instances at Off-Peak Hours

When optimizing cloud costs, your instance usage patterns are the first place you should look. While it’s tempting to run as many instances as possible during business hours and scale back during off-hours, this approach can end up costing more than necessary.

The key is knowing what constitutes an off-peak hour for your specific workloads. For example, if most of your sales come in around 10 AM each day and die down throughout the afternoon, then any time between midnight and 9 AM could be considered an off-peak hour for servers running that application.

To ensure that your applications are always running on the cheapest instance type available, you’ll want to set up a CloudWatch alarm with a threshold based on average utilization percentage or average CPU utilization. It will allow you to automatically trigger shutdown notifications when a VM hits its target utilization levels so that no one has to manually manage these processes themselves.

Use More Cost-Effective AWS Services

AWS Lambda is one of the most popular AWS services, with a 44% market share. The serverless computing service automatically executes code based on different events and manages the compute resources required by each code. It’s incredibly cost-effective because you only pay for the compute resources used by your application, but it also requires some work to architect your application for maximum efficiency.

To start using AWS Lambda, first identify which functions can easily be moved from EC2 instances to Lambda. For example, if you have an old website that needs updating with new features or content regularly, you could use CloudWatch Events to trigger a Lambda function whenever someone requests an update of the site’s RSS feed. This way, you don’t need additional servers to handle site updates.

Tag Resources Properly

Tagging resources properly is a critical part of cloud cost management and optimization. By tagging, you can track the cost of each resource, identify unused resources, and even optimize costs.

You can also use tagging to create groups of similar resources to compare performance metrics. For example, this would help you determine if it’s better to have multiple instances of the same type or one instance, which could save you money in the long run.

Generally speaking, tagging helps you to manage and optimize cloud costs by providing insight into how much your organization spends on various applications and services, including computing power (CPU), storage (RAM), and networking bandwidth (Ethernet).

Optimize Autoscaling Group Capacity

For the best results, autoscaling group capacity should be optimized based on the workload of the application. You can analyze your application’s resource usage and performance metrics. But what if your application isn’t running at peak capacity all day?

You may have to use multiple autoscaling groups with different strategies to control costs while maintaining high-performance levels. For example, you could use one autoscaling group for normal traffic levels and another for occasional spikes in traffic or even separate groups for production applications versus development environments.

Monitor and Optimize Cloud Costs Regularly

The most important thing you can do to keep your cloud costs low is to monitor them and optimize them regularly. By monitoring your spending, you’ll understand better where it’s going and make adjustments as needed. It’s also a good idea to outsource cloud solutions from expert providers. An IT support in Manhattan helps organizations maximize their IT system, and leverage only on technologies your business needs while achieving maximum returns on investments. A lot more IT support experts are available in other areas and they will help you optimize your cloud costs by reducing them to what only your business needs.

The right tool should be easy-to-use and provide actionable insights that allow you to change your expenditures when necessary. It should also integrate with other important platforms for small business owners, like accounting software programs or CRM solutions, so they’re compatible with whatever systems are already in place in your company.

Conclusion

Ultimately, it’s important to remember that the cloud isn’t just a cost-saving measure; it can also help you grow your business. By taking advantage of tools like Google Apps and Salesforce, small businesses can find customers more easily and manage their sales processes better.