🦆 How a Duck Saves You Money in AWS

In partnership with

What happened this week:

• Duck Guides to Save You Money with AWS SPs & RIs

• AWS AI Cost Optimization Strategies.

• Another week with Tons of AWS News, mostly Good 👼

• Mention of Honour: FinOps Master Thesis

• Job Offers

• Professional Spotlight with my partner in FinOps

Dropping great stuff. Enjoy yourself:

Collaborate with FinOps Weekly

AWS Guides
A Duck’s Guide to RIs & SPs

Duckbill releases guides for AWS Reserved Instances & Savings Plans. Here’s a summary of both:

Savings Plans

• AWS Savings Plans (SPs) offer discounts for committed hourly compute usage. SPs cover EC2, Lambda, and Fargate services.

• SPs are financial tools, not capacity reservations. Think of SPs as committed use discounts.

• You can stack multiple SPs. Balance commitments with growth needs. Evaluate quarterly for adjustments.

• SPs cannot be resold. No market like Reserved Instances.

• Compute and EC2 Instance SPs are two types. Compute SPs are flexible with easy management. EC2 Instance SPs require more specific choices.

• Mixing Compute and EC2 Instance SPs can enhance discounts. Be cautious to avoid overspending. Communication is key in planning.

• SPs apply with “deepest discount first.” Automatically covers workloads for maximum savings. Think in aggregate, not per instance.

• Combine SPs and Reserved Instances for best results. SPs will apply once RIs expire.

• Use AWS tools for SP analysis. Coverage and utilization reports guide decisions. Aim for high coverage and utilization.

Reserved Instances

• RIs are a way to save money by committing to use certain AWS services. They aren’t reservations about capacity themselves.

• They are available for services like EC2, Elasticache, OpenSearch, RDS, and Redshift.

• EC2 RIs offer regional and zonal reservation options with specific configurations.

• There are Standard and Convertible RIs, each with different flexibility and discount levels.

• AWS provides tools to help report and manage your RI usage and coverage.

In partnership with Envisor
The Power of Bespoke FinOps without DIY Tooling

AWS
Default minimum object size for S3 Lifecycle transition rules

It’s one of the most commented news of the week on LinkedIn. AWS’s new default minimum is affecting one of the core mechanisms of cost optimization in storage, Lifecycle rules. Here’s how:

• New Default Minimum Object Size: Amazon S3 will now apply a default minimum object size of 128 KB for S3 Lifecycle transition rules to optimize transition costs.

• Customization Options: Users can override this default and set a custom minimum object size for their S3 Lifecycle transition rules.

• Impact on Existing Rules: This change will not affect existing S3 Lifecycle rules but will apply to any new or modified configurations.

• Deployment: The new default is being deployed across all AWS Regions and will be completed in the coming days.

Events
FinOps NEXUS Virtual Conference 2024

FinOps Nexus Conference brings together thought leaders, practitioners, and innovators from across the globe to explore the latest trends, best practices, and strategies in FinOps.

The conference will feature a series of interactive sessions, panel discussions, and deep dives into topics like cost optimization, cloud financial management, and cross-functional collaboration. Hear from industry experts and gain insights into the challenges and solutions that are shaping the future of cloud finance.

GenAI
AWS AI Cost Optimization Strategies

Are you interested in using generative AI but worried about costs? Here’s a guide to help you optimize expenses effectively.

Choose the Right Model

• Define your use case clearly.

• Balance performance, accuracy, and cost.

• Use smaller models for specific tasks.

Fine-Tuning and Customization

• Use pre-trained models and add your own data.

• Consider retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) for cost-effective customization.

• Fine-tune only when necessary for high accuracy.

Focus on Good Data Management

• Quality data is more important than quantity.

• Clean data improves model efficiency and accuracy.

• Invest in data organization and governance.

Implement Cost-Saving Practices

• Foster a culture aware of AI costs.

• Use FinOps for better resource management.

• Encourage teams to optimize and own their AI costs.

Cloud Architecture
Optimize Distributed Systems: Reduce Latency & Costs

In distributed systems, keeping costs low and performance high can be tricky. Here are some tips to help:

• Use Zone Aware Routing: Direct traffic within the same zone. Save on data transfer costs.

• Adopt Advanced Tools: Use Istio or Kubernetes for zone awareness. Tools help manage cross-zone data transfer.

• Choose the Right Databases: Some DBs can read data locally to save costs. Consider Kafka or Redis for zone-friendly routing.

• Be Mindful of Cluster Hotspots: Uneven data can overload specific zones. Balance and scale services efficiently.

Optimizing distributed systems is vital for performance and cost.

AWS
Estimate your AWS Network Costs with a New Tool

AWS Networking Costs Calculator helps you estimate AWS networking service costs.

It’s open-source, self-hosted, and web-based.

1. How It Works: Choose your AWS Region and services.

   Enter details like data transfer and endpoints.

2. Cost Visualization: Displays diagrams for traffic flow. Shows estimated charges for each service.

3. Tool Architecture: Combines a serverless backend and a ReactJS frontend.

   Uses services like AWS Lambda and DynamoDB.

4. Getting Started: Prerequisites include Linux OS, NodeJS, and AWS CDK.

5. Using It: Access via a web URL provided during setup. Adjust inputs to see cost projections

6. Limitations and Considerations: Cost estimates are approximate. Not all AWS services are included yet.

7. Future Plans: Continual updates and more services are planned.

The calculator simplifies understanding of AWS networking costs.

Mention of Honour presented by FinOpsly

End-to-End FinOps.

Data at the speed of thought.

FinOps Empowered by AI.

FinOpsly’s AI-powered platform helps optimize your cloud cost and performance by understanding the unique complexities of your cloud infrastructure.

🎖️ Mention of Honour
FinOps Master Thesis

Carlos made a complete Master’s thesis on a FinOps case, and it’s publicly available!

Using FinOps to Efficiently Manage Infrastructure and Operational Costs: A Case Study of Massive Data.

Quoting the author’s abstract:

A great read, and deeply recommended for anyone interested in FinOps!

🏆 Quick Wins

Announcements

Amazon EC2 X8g instances Release + Introducing Amazon EC2 C8g and M8g Instances

Karpenter & AWS CUDOS included in ThoughtWorks Technology Radar

Articles & Podcasts

What’s new in Cloud FinOps? Interview with Udam Dewaraja – The story of FOCUS

Handbook to AWS Cost Optimization

Inventory of Azure Resource Tagging with Graph Explorer and KQL

My Kubernetes Optimization Masterclass Slidedeck

Professional Spotlight
Damian Munafo

My New Partner in FinOps

As some of you may know, we launched a Podcast for FinOps in Spanish together with Damian. A guy who is extremely easy to work with, and we’ll launch several things together. Stay tuned and check his content!

👩‍🏭 FinOps Job Offers

Permanent links (i.e. FinOps Job site) and FinOps Job Offers online.

💬 FinOps Connect Community

Join the FinOps Connect Slack Channel and let’s grow the community!

🗳️ Poll of the Week

Let’s Collaborate!

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