Become an AWS pro with techniques to optimize cloud costs, efficiency, and automation. Developed by AWS Solution Certified Architects. Get hands-on skills with no setup, no cleanup, no hassle.

'AWS Cost optimization' Course Cover Art.png

Your organization weighed the options, ran the numbers, took a deep breath, and migrated to the cloud. That’s a perfectly solid strategic move—but your monthly invoices aren’t quite as lean as your original business case predicted. What’s worse, they are actually larger than your prior costs and increasing! This, unfortunately, is not uncommon. However, you can manage your resources with smart cost optimization techniques to shrink those bills. 

Optimizing your costs–regardless of the cloud provider–takes some work. In this course, you'll discover methods and tools on AWS to optimize cloud costs, including best practices for efficiency, cost transparency, and automation. 

You'll gain a comprehensive grasp of cloud economics, cost considerations, and a practical toolbox for streamlining AWS workloads with reduced manual effort. By implementing some strategies in this course, you will significantly reduce the chances of ever getting that surprise AWS invoice again!

AWS Cost Optimization

IAM-based restriction on who can start and stop EC2 instances

Storing login credentials for use in command-line scripts

Tracking how much a Spot Instance running a given application is costing us

Marking which resources could be terminated or deleted at the end of the week in our sandbox account

What would _not_ be a good use for tagging?

What would not be a good use for tagging?

This is not possible, as consolidated billing will spread the consumption of the AWS credits equally across all accounts.

This is not possible, as consolidated billing will consume the credits on a first-come first-used basis across all accounts.

This is possible if we disable credit sharing and apply the credits to just the R&D account.

This is possible if we manually reclassify the consumption of credits using AWS Billing Conductor.

Your organization has been awarded a grant of $1000 in AWS credits, which can exclusively be used for research and development per the terms of the grant. Currently, you use AWS Organizations for consolidated billing across three accounts: the R&D account, the Production account, and the Sandbox account. How will you go about ensuring those AWS credits are only used by the R&D account?

Your organization has been awarded a grant of $1000 in AWS credits, which can exclusively be used for research and development per the terms of the grant. Currently, you use AWS Organizations for consolidated billing across three accounts: the R&amp;D account, the Production account, and the Sandbox account. How will you go about ensuring those AWS credits are only used by the R&amp;D account?

Use Cost Categories to track all resources and set a trigger that tells us when anyone uses anything that is not in the free tier.

Set up an AWS Budget with a zero spend budget so that we are notified if we exceed the AWS Free Tier limit.

Assign a staff member to constantly monitor the AWS Free Tier usage in the AWS Billing dashboard.

Use a disposable credit card number which you close as soon as you set up the AWS account.

What is the best way to monitor our AWS account and keep it from exceeding the free tier level?

What is the best way to monitor our AWS account and keep it from exceeding the free tier level?

Use AWS SageMaker to set up a time-series algorithm

Use the Cost Explorer and periodically compare last month with the current month

Use the Coverage Report to see how our costs are changing over time

What is the best way to monitor our historical costs and be alerted if they diverge from that historical baseline?

What is the best way to monitor our historical costs and be alerted if they diverge from that historical baseline?

What is one service that all AWS account owners should have enabled?

What is one service that all AWS account owners should have enabled?

Test your knowledge of the topics covered in this chapter.

Introduction

The Economics of Cloud Computing

The AWS Cost Optimization Pillar

Rightsizing

Elasticity

Pick the Right Pricing Model

Measure, Monitor, Improve

More Ways to Save

Wrap Up and Keeping Current

You Make The (Cost Optimization) Call!

Quiz: Measure, Monitor, Improve