Cloud cost management

Cloud cost management manages the cloud cost through a well-monitored and standardized process. Customers can check their cloud costs based on resource consumption, optimize the prices and regularly upgrade to packages that are more suitable to their requirements. It can be difficult to maintain the costs without a centralized system because the costs can increase rapidly during resource-intensive processes.

Cloud cost management.
Cloud cost management.

Cloud cost models

Cloud cost models are the standard pricing structures that the service providers set to charge the customers for availing their cloud services. These models help to determine how the customers will be billed for the resource. Let's discuss the commonly used cloud cost models.

Stop instances

It is a cost-saving model with good discount offers available around the year for non-critical and fault-tolerant traffic. They are space computing resources offered at a reasonable rate but can be terminated when the provider wants. Therefore, it is only feasible for processes that will not be critically affected by the interruption.

Reserved instances

It is a cost-effective model in cases where you can accurately predict the required resource capacity to compute the processes. There are big discounts available if the customer commits to a specific computing capacity for an evident period of time. Moreover, the billing is based on the total capacity rather than the total instances, so the customer can change the sizes as required.

Savings plans

It is a commonly used cost model by major cloud service providers, including AWS and Azure, to provide cost-efficient discounts and flexible pricing to committed customers. Generally, the customers should have one to three years of commitment to avail the perks of the savings plan. The offers are provided on the total capacity, therefore, providing liberty in resource usage.

Pay-as-you-go

It is a per-use basis cost model that charges the customer for each used resource individually and is commonly availed by customers who require a customized package. It provides the customers the flexibility to add or remove the resources according to their requirements and pay only for them. However, as the use increases, the resources increase and, consequently, the cost, which can, at times, get difficult to manage.

Subscription-based

It is a monthly or annual payment-based method in which the customers can pay a specified payment every month and avail of the resources for a pre-determined period of time. It is best suited for larger companies that have a predetermined set of services and features to avail and use them to their full capacity limits throughout the set time.

Note: Using to the full capacity does not means it is insufficient and by the nearing end of the time period capacity issues arise. In this case, upgrade to a cost model that provides sufficient capacity.

Cost management tools

Cloud service providers have developed cost management tools that are used to track the usage of resources across the cloud service. These tools offer recommendations and optimal packages to provide secure plans and provide effective ways to cut costs.

Cost management tools.
Cost management tools.

How to reduce cloud costs

It can be expensive to purchase costly cloud services for a long period of time and larger resource consumption. In order to provide a cost-effective experience to customers on the cloud, there are different ways to reduce the cost.

Let's discuss a few ways that help in reducing cloud costs.

Methods

How are they helpful?

Power Scheduling

The instances not being used are automatically shut down to save the usage cost.

Automatic scaling

Allows to scale up and scale down the resources based on the requirements, which helps to reduce the cost.

Removing unused instances

The instances that are not used frequently are removed to save up the cost from that instance.

Free tiers

Many cloud service providers offer free tools and services to try before committing

to a paid package.

Cloud cost management tools

Use the cloud cost management tools to monitor the resources and scale instances to optimize the package.

Right-sizing resources

Monitor the resource consumption and resize or replace the instances that are not being utilized fully with a more important resource.

Summary

Cloud cost management is a preferred approach to optimize costs and track resource usage. Different cost models can be selected by the customer based on the requirement. To avail models cost-effectively, different methods can be used to reduce the cost, including cloud cost management tools. Many cloud service providers offer monitoring tools to facilitate customers to monitor their resource usage.

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