My journey to AWS Solution Architect Exam — Part 50 — Design cost-optimized compute solutions
Creating cost-efficient compute solutions on AWS necessitates harnessing a lot of AWS services and functionalities to trim expenses while ensuring performance benchmarks are met.
Right-sizing instances
Choose instance types that match your workload requirements. AWS provides a wide range of instance types optimized for different workloads. Use AWS Compute Optimizer to analyze historical utilization data and make recommendations for right-sizing instances.
Utilize Spot instances
Spot Instances allow you to bid for spare AWS compute capacity at a significantly lower price than On-Demand instances. Use Spot Instances for fault-tolerant and flexible workloads that can handle interruptions.
Reserved instances (RIs)
RIs provide a significant discount compared to on-demand pricing if you commit to a specific instance type in a region for a one- or three-year term. Analyze your usage patterns and commit to RIs for instances with steady workloads.
Auto Scaling
Implement auto-scaling to dynamically adjust the number of EC2 instances based on demand. This ensures you have enough capacity to handle traffic spikes efficiently without over-provisioning.
Containerization
Use Amazon ECS (Elastic Container Service) or Amazon EKS (Elastic Kubernetes Service) to run containers. Containers help in better resource utilization and scalability. AWS Fargate provides serverless container management, eliminating the need to provision and manage servers.
Serverless computing
Consider serverless options like AWS Lambda for event-driven workloads. With Lambda, you pay only for the compute time consumed, without worrying about provisioning or managing servers.
Storage optimization
Choose the right storage class based on your data access patterns.
Cost monitoring and optimization tools
Utilize AWS Cost Explorer and AWS Budgets to monitor and forecast your AWS spending. Set up budgets and alerts to be notified when costs exceed thresholds.
Use AWS Trusted Advisor
Trusted Advisor provides recommendations for optimizing AWS infrastructure across various aspects, including compute. It can help identify opportunities for cost savings and performance improvements.
