If you’ve decided on focusing on maximizing your cloud’s return on investment this year, then you’re not alone. Achieving better performance while reducing costs is not an easy task. You will need to keep a close eye on your spending and resources to recognize areas for enhancements. And while it may seem like a daunting task at first, it isn’t. Boosting your cloud ROI can be simple if you know what to look for.

Here are our top five tips that can help you avoid common errors, reduce costs, and maximize your cloud ROI.

Right-Size Your Instances

The cloud offers you many options to ensure that you have the right-size instance for your workload. It’s important for you to go through your options and make sure that you’re not spending more on computing capacity than necessary.

If you find that you’re unsure at the beginning of how much capacity you will need, then start small. It’s always better to start small and then scale up if you realize that you require more. And don’t forget to take advantage of auto-scaling in the cloud. As many providers give you the option to automate scaling to meet demand. So, take advantage of it, this way you can be sure that you’re only paying for the necessary capacity.

Take Advantage of the Different Pricing Models

Many cloud providers offer more pricing options than on-demand pricing, and you need to take advantage of them to achieve more cost savings. Depending on your workload type and the capacity required, you might benefit more from one of the other options.

• • On-Demand
    One-demand is the most popular option among the cloud’s options, as it lets you spin up instances without paying in advance, as you pay by the hour or second instead. It’s most ideal for unpredictable workloads or for testing the environment before you migrate.
  • Spot Instances
    Spot instances are unused instances that you can use for up to 90% less. They often offer the biggest discount. However, they can be terminated at any minute, so keep that in mind. You will get a notification two minutes before the instance is terminated, so they are best for workloads that can afford interruptions, as you can start it again once the spare capacity is available.
  • Reserved Instances (RIs)
    Reserved instances can offer you up to 75% in savings in exchange for committing for a one-to-three-year period. And you can choose to pay all upfront, partial upfront, or not pay upfront at all. However, keep in mind that the more you pay upfront, the more you’ll save. Reserved instances are perfect for predictable workloads, especially if you can guarantee your capacity for at least the next year. And should you need to use more capacity, then you can use the on-demand option for the extra capacity.

 

These are just the three common pricing options for cloud providers, some providers may offer more unique options to them. So, make sure to go through your options and pick the appropriate one for you. And if you’d like to learn more about Amazon Web Services (AWS) pricing options, then read our post here.

Discard Unused Resources

Idle instances, old snapshots, unused elastic IPs, and many more unused resources can easily drive up your bill. As you are paying for the resources you order whether they’re being used or not. So, make sure to discard of instances that you no longer need, as well as any other resources that have served their purpose. There are also many cloud management tools that can identify unhealthy resources and then automatically delete them or flag them for manual review. So, keep an eye out for what you are currently using on the cloud and make sure that you’re only paying for what you require.

Automate Cost Management

Automation in the cloud is fairly simple and pays off in the long run. As it helps you save costs by catching issues early. We’ve already talked about two examples of automation, right-sizing and idle resources. Spending the time necessary in the beginning to understand where automation is needed and setting up rules, helps you save significant costs in the future.

Review Your Architecture

To ensure your architecture is optimized, you should conduct a full review every once in a while. No matter how hard you try to stay on top of issues and keep track of everything, it’s not possible. As a result, some errors are to be expected. The goal of a full review is to catch them before they become too costly.

So, what should you expect in a full architecture review? Well, simply put, you should expect to review your usage, cost, security, and much more. This way, you expect to gain total visibility into your environment. As, it is a comprehensive look into your environment.

A simple way to get this review is by getting a cloud checkup with a trusted partner like ForteCloud. Our cloud checkup gives you complete visibility into your environment and highlights wasted resources, security, and compliance vulnerabilities. We use past data to produce our comprehensive report of your environment to pinpoint issues and vulnerabilities, so we can address them immediately. This not only solves any issues you may have now, but also helps you make more informed decisions in the future. Contact us today for a consultation.

Conclusion

Cost reduction is one of the cloud’s most attractive benefits, but it’s easy for your cloud usage to go out of hand. And while it may seem like a simple affair, it’s not that simple. It will require some effort on your part to ensure that your cost is optimized for performance. This way, you can ensure that you’re truly maximizing your cloud ROI.