Amazon ec2 budget - how INVOKE can help it reduce
by INVOKE Team
Posted on March 20, 2018 at 12:00 PM
“Cost savings”, a very frequently used term in our daily life, specially if you are hosting projects on cloud, “cost savings” could be one of the factors. Though we move to cloud to save some money, recent RightScale study observed that around $10B was wasted on cloud spend and one of the top reason for this waste is leaving ec2 instances in running state when no one using them.
We have observed similar waste when we hosted few applications on cloud. One of primary finding was, most of our cloud cost is coming from
aws ec2 instances
. Then we started exploring for cost optimization solutions (not only we, another RightScale study observed that organizations trying to gain control of cloud costs ).We tried solutions like ec2 schedulers. But, they are not optimal solutions to save on AWS instance costs. Why? Let us quickly check it. When you are using
ec2 schedulers
, you need to configure applicable schedules for the servers. Servers will come up and stay running till the scheduled turn off time, irrespective of any one accessing those servers.In cloud computing era, where most of the resources are billed per second, leaving servers up & running when no one using them, will not help much with your AWS cloud bill and not best optimization. For example, while using AWS ec2 instances (linux instances), you will be billed for every second when ec2 instances is in “running” state, even if no one using them, which is unnecessary cloud waste.
The other solution everyone suggest is go for “server less” approach to have true pay for use model. Though “server less” is great technology, we need to understand that there are lot of hurdles to take this approach, especially if it is existing project. I don’t want to go into this discussion now.
Based on these results, we realized that there are no real cost optimization solutions available in market for “server based” settings. This gap in market prompted us to create INVOKE cloud to “save on AWS instance costs” and reduce our AWS bill while having the capability to bring up cloud servers when needed. Though our initial intention was to reduce AWS bill, deploying our solution at client sites and upon interviewing our clients, it was clear that they not only saved costs but also helped their team focus on core functions.
Direct Cost Benefits:
INVOKE saves a lot of money for clients who have systems which doesn’t need to run 24/7, but would need to be brought up on as need basis.
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If you are not using schedulers but have a need to bring servers up on demand, we are sure thatOther benefits are savings & efficiencies clients observed while using INVOKE.Other benefits are savings & efficiencies clients observed while using INVOKE.Other benefits are savings & efficiencies clients observed while using INVOKE.
Other Benefits:
Other benefits are savings & efficiencies clients observed while using INVOKE. These benefits are not direct money savings, which is why we call them as other benefits. We classify these as below:
In my opinion, AWS consumers can categorize these charges into 2 types.
- In-direct cost benefits (on human resources)
These are the cost savings client observed elsewhere with-in their project, not directly on their AWS bill. One of our client, is a software development company, had scheduler set up, which brings up all their servers at 7 AM and shutdown at 7 PM. Their team has frequent need to access the AWS resources (ec2 instances) while the servers were down (due to project deadlines).
Before INVOKE, the flow used to be something like “team member” needs to call “Ops Team” who will start the servers. This coordination activity used to cause around 20 to 30 minutes time waste because of non office hours. These team members are consultants, so they bill the hours. Not cheap right?
After INVOKE, their team members were equipped to bring their servers up when needed, which means no more Ops team involvement. Our client realized that their Ops team hourly billing has reduced considerable, which has resulted in savings for them.
- Faster deliverables
The same client experienced that their deliverables are faster after they installed INVOKE, because the dependency between Ops team and core team is reduced. Their core team has the capability to start/stop the servers when needed, which enabled them to work on their schedules, which enabled them to deliver software faster.
