Cloud computing is vital for businesses as it allows them to maintain flexibility, scale, and focus on different business operations instead of managing complex IT infrastructure. And one excellent way to start with cloud computing is by collaborating with a cloud service provider like Amazon Web Services. The platform is critical in cloud services, drawing in good revenue for Amazon. As per reports, AWS revenue has steadily grown since its inception in 2006, at 80 billion dollars in 2022.

AWS offers programmers and developers easy access to various IT resources and tools, like DevOps, computing tools, IT infrastructure, SaaS applications, and analytics tools. Nevertheless, companies face several cloud problems, like suboptimal application placement, unused capacity, and overuse, that can increase their AWS billing. Though it can be difficult to identify wastes and control costs, here are 5 simple tips you can use to bring down your AWS bill:

Choose the Right Instances and Clip-Off those Unused

Different types of instances cost differently. Choose cost-effective instances that suit your application workload to keep your AWS bill in control. Consider specific use cases to identify the processing unit type and memory amount you need. Optimize your instance resource at least twice yearly to match your application workload.

Also, consider spot instances that allow AWS to assign its unused potential to users at lower rates. Most of these instances are available at around 90% discount rates, and you can use them for flexible or fault-tolerant workloads. But use them cautiously, as AWS can terminate them within two minutes of notification.

 

Eliminating unused and idle resources is another efficient way to reduce your AWS bill. You must do this especially during weekends or at the end of your work day. Different AWS services, like Elastic Beanstalk and OpWorks, help developers with fast and consistent deployment and redeployment of applications without caring about the underlying infrastructure. This could be a good way of saving money by shutting or deleting unused instances.

Go for Consolidated Billing

If you have several accounts, use AWS’ consolidated billing service to have a single-window view of all charges incurred across all your accounts. Simply set up one account as your master account to pay for all the other accounts. You can easily track and download the charges levied to each account into a CSV file and use this data to analyze and monitor changes. Moving data usage across tiers into a single consolidated account will help make substantial savings in your multiple billing amounts.

Keep an Eye on Service Usage

CloudWatch and Trusted Advisor are in-built monitoring and management tools that can help reduce your AWS bill by providing instance metrics. Use these tools for data evaluation that can further help you determine the need for scaling instance size; reviewing workloads and identifying all unused or non-production instances.

 

With Trusted Advisor, you can run configuration checks to identify all idle resources and get real-time suggestions on using AWS best practices. Similarly, use CloudWatch to establish alarms and monitor and track log files and key metrics. You can also use the tool to identify metrics crucial for the performance of applications and evaluate custom metrics created by the applications. This form of resource tracking and monitoring brings down AWS costs to a considerable extent.

Select the Perfect Storage Class

Amazon S3 offers 4 varied object storage tiers, which include:

• Amazon S3 Standard: This object storage tier uses frequently accessed and general usage data. You can benefit from this Amazon Free tier if you have a small company with low usage. Exclusive features of the tier include:
• 15GB data transfer
• 5GB S3 storage
• 2, 000 PUT requests
• 20, 000 GET requests
• Amazon S3 Standard- Inferior Access: You can use this tier to store data that is not as frequently required or used as in the Standard instance. The inferior access Amazon S3 tier is more affordable than the Standard instance, but it comes with a data retrieval fee.
• Amazon S3 One Zone-Infrequent Access: Use this tier for the secondary back as data in this tier is not as resilient as the IA tier and remains stored in one availability zone.
• Amazon Glacier: This tier is best for storing backups or data archival. The bulk retrieval time for data in this tier ranges between 5 to 10 hours. However, an additional cost can help you retrieve data quickly within 1 to 10 minutes.

The cost of each tier may vary based on the parameters below:

• Data transfer volume
• Number of HTTP GET requests

You can keep required data in the most expensive storage class, data infrequently used in the middle tier, and data used more infrequently in the archive tier, from where you can even delete it. This strategic and combined use of all the tiers can help bring down your AWS bill substantially. 

Consult Technical Experts

Consulting experienced and skilled technical experts can also help you optimize your AWS cost. These experts will use their cloud computing knowledge and real-time experience to review your AWS cloud structure. They will give suggestions to reduce expenses and ensure strategic improvement of your cloud computing environment. You can also subscribe to AWS billing monitoring services to monitor your AWS billing expenditures.

Conclusion

A little effort and time put into actual planning can go a long way in reducing your AWS billing while helping with improved application performance and reduced administrative workload. Besides the above tips, monitoring your regular usage and enabling a reliable professional can help you keep your AWS usage and billing on track.