1. AWS BEST PRACTICES
Module 3: Costs Optimization
July 2017

2. Performance Optimization
AWS Best Practices Training Program
Basic Approaches
Course overview
Basic infrastructure requirements
Reliability and Performance overview
Costs optimization overview
Monitoring tools overview
Useful tools overview
Security in AWS
Basic security principles and tools
Access management
Data encryption and protection
Network security
Costs Optimization
The “Minimum Principle” and Auto Scaling
Serverless architectures
Container-based architectures
Resources review and optimization
Using Reserved Instances
Using Spot Instances
Performance Optimization
AWS Service Limits
Components selection and review
Backup
Components failure withstanding

3. Introduction

4. AWS COSTS ELEMENTS OVERVIEW
EC2 Instance (Compute)
EBS Volumes
EBS IOPS
AWS VM Price
Date Transfer
Elastic IP
Elastic LB
Mind Other Services!

5. AWS EC2 Billing Modes On Demand: Pay-as-you-go approach.
Reserved Instances: Reserve capacities for 1 or 3 years. Actual usage rate does not matter
No upfront – pay monthly during 1 year
Partial upfront – pay a portion upfront, and the rest – during the reservation period
All upfront – pay all upfront, only once, for the whole period
Spot Instances: Pay 30-90% of On Demand, but be ready that the instance can be shut off:

6. AWS COSTS OPTIMIZATION: SHORT OVERVIEW
Project costs is one of the crucial challenges managers face. Uncontrolled and unreasonable usage of virtual resources on AWS can lead to unexpected expenses, that can be easily omitted by keeping in mind several simple rules:
Use the “Minimum” principle: order the resources with the minimum capacity, necessary for your needs. You can always expand, when necessary.
Select proper resources: the correct resource selection can provide you with the necessary results without extra expenses.
Use auto scaling to dynamically adjust your infrastructure to your needs
Use Serverless and Container based approaches.
Utilize resources reasonably: monitor low utilized resources and adjust their usage. Stopped resources cost up to 70% less than running ones
Use Reserved and Spot Instances: a Spot instance can cost up to 90% less than an on-demand one.
Use schedules: automate the start/stop processes
Set up Quotas: to track and control monthly expenses

7. Take Minimum
… and Scale

8. HINT 1: Take the minimum… and scale
AWS allows you to order the minimum necessary resources, and scale them – either manually or automatically, according to your needs.
T2: burstable performance instances
M4/M3: general purpose instances
C4/C3: compute optimized instances
X1/R4/R3: memory optimized instances
P2/G2/F1: accelerated computing instances
I3: High I/O instances
D2: Dense-storage instances

9. HINT 2: Use Serverless and Container-Based Apps
Amazon EC2 Container Service
AWS Lambdas
Automatic scaling
Automatic provisioning
No need to manage infrastructure
No need to learn new language
You can use any library, including native
Bring your code
$0.20 per million requests, 1M free
Easily manage Docker containers
Flexible container placement
Designed for use with other AWS services
Extensible
Performance at scale
Secure

10. Reasonable
Resources Usage

11. HINT 3: Use resources reasonably
Turn Off the Lights
Developer, test, training instances
Use simple instance start and stop
Or tear down and build up all together using AWS CloudFormation
Instances are disposable!
Cuts ONLY compute price!

12. Using Schedules Running VM Stopped VM
The Idea
Running VM
Stopped VM
<show live schedules>
Automate infrastructure management
Minimize human factor
Set up any convenient schedule
Automatic check of schedules execution

13. HINT 3: Use resources reasonably
AWS Trusted Advisor
aws.amazon.com/premiumsupport/trustedadvisor/
Free with Business or Enterprise Support (that EPAM has)

14. HINT 3: Use resources reasonably
Use Optimization Statistics on the Monitoring Page
cloud.epam.com/maestro2/ui/monitoring

15. HINT 3: Use resources reasonably
Low Utilization report

16. Reserved and
Spot Instances

17. HINT 4: Use Reserved Instances
Reserved instances can help cut costs for predictable infrastructures significantly:

18. HINT 5: Use Spot Instances
Spot Instances Rules
Price based on supply/demand
You choose your maximum price/hour
Your instance is started if the Spot price is lower
Your instance is terminated if the Spot price is higher, with 2 minutes notice
But: You did plan for fault tolerance, didn’t you?
Best Practice
Use Bid Advisor
Set the bid price closer to the price of the on- demand instance of the similar type
Set up fault tolerance
Spot block: guaranteed capacity for 1-6 hours with 30-50% discount

19. HINT 5: Use Spot Instances
Bid Advisor
Use the Bid Advisor tool to check the profit of each type of spot instances, and to estimate the possibility of outbidding

20. HINT 5: Use Spot Instances
Use Cases
Stateless web/app server fleets
Testing
Batch workload
Web servers
Continuous integration (CI)
High performance computing (HPC)
Grid computing
Media rendering/transcoding
See more at: aws.amazon.com/ec2/spot

21. Expenses Control
Tools

22. EPAM Orchestrator Monthly Quotas: Overview
Monthly quotas specify the desired limit for Cloud Expenses within the month. In case several quota rules are specified, the narrowest (with smallest limit) is applied.
ALL - the quota is applied cumulatively to all regions in which the project is activated.
All AWS(EPAM/GCP/Azure) – the quota is applied cumulatively to all regions of an external provider, in which the project is activated.
EACH - the quota is applied to each region in which the project is activated.
EACH AWS(EPAM/GCP/Azure) – the quota is applied in each region of an external provider, in which the project is activated.
Region by name – Specify a quota for a specific region

23. EPAM Orchestrator Quotas: Management
Review quota settings
Update quota limits
Specify quota depletion actions

24. EPAM Orchestration Resource Quotas
Item
Description
Limit
Type
Volumes
Number of storage volumes created 5
Daily
Volume size
Size of each storage volume
500 GB
Total volume size
Total size of each volume
2.5 TB
Instances
Number of instances created 20
Resource utilization
The cost of the utilized infrastructure
300 USD
Monthly
PM can set approvals for VM Creation!

25. Unusual Activities Report
EPAM Orchestrator analyzes your AWS activities and informs you in case unusual activity is detected.
When a daily resource creation quota in AWS is exceeded on your project within an hour, Project Coordinators and Delivery managers get a notification via SMS and a respective with the details on these activities, and two action buttons:
Approve: verify that the enormous resource creation activities are expected
Reject: all the resources listed in the report will be terminated, and the related accounts deleted
When limits are set, we can start controlling meeting them. This report reacts on limits exceeding
If Approve or Reject button is not pressed by Project Coordinator or Delivery Manager within 15 minutes after the notification, EPAM Cloud Support team can take the responsibility to Reject resources creation and to take all the necessary hack-protection measures.

26. NEXT STEPS

27. Security Education: Online Course
Get a free course on AWS APN portal (
Pass an APN Course or a Certification
Submit a Certificate
Get a badge
Get to the pro-list for further courses
+ Investigate our Web Site (
+ Watch the Video Portal (

28. Issues Resolving Flow
Please also feel free to address EPAM Cloud Consulting team

29. AWS Enterprise Support Access
24/7 customer support with less than 1 hour response time
Response to critical events less than 15 minutes
Support by Senior Cloud Support Engineers via , chat and phone in case of critical events
Unlimited number of cases Dedicated technical Account Manager and Concierge Agent
Free Infrastructure Event Management Service
Access to AWS Trusted Advisor and Support API functions
Regular communication including AWS resource usage reporting, monitoring, recommendations on infrastructure optimization and improvement
Access to Amazon documentation

30. Home Work
Get a free course on AWS APN portal (
Pass AWS TCO and Cloud Economics Course

31. Documentation Hybrid Cloud Guide Terms and Conditions
Cloud Security Policy
The guide providing the details on integration with AWS and Azure.
EPAM Cloud terms and conditions: terms definitions, parties responsibilities
EPAM Cloud Security policies and approaches
FAQ
Cloud Glossary
Cloud Consulting
What’s New
Release Notes
Video Overview
Address us if you have any questions!
EPAM Cloud frequently asked questions
See the whole documentation set on

32. Performance Optimization
AWS Best Practices Training Program
Basic Approaches
Course overview
Basic infrastructure requirements
Reliability and Performance overview
Costs optimization overview
Monitoring tools overview
Useful tools overview
Costs Optimization
The “Minimum Principle” and Auto Scaling
Serverless architectures
Container-based architectures
Resources review and optimization
Using Reserved Instances
Using Spot Instances
NEXT: Security in AWS
Basic security principles and tools
Access management
Data encryption and protection
Network security
Performance Optimization
AWS Service Limits
Components selection and review
Backup
Components failure withstanding

33. Thank you for attention!
Cloud in Yammer:
EPAM Cloud Consulting team