The Frugal Architect's FinOps Journey: A Series of Cost-Saving Adventures - Part 3

Measure

LAW IV  - Unobserved Systems Lead to Unknown Costs

Dr. Werner’s Cloud FinOps Insights

Without careful observation and measurement, the true costs of operating a system remain invisible. Like a utility meter tucked away in a basement, lack of visibility enables wasteful habits. Making meters more visible can profoundly shift behaviors.

Though observation requires investment, not implementing adequate monitoring is shortsighted. The adage warns, “If you can’t measure it, you can’t manage it.” Tracking utilization, spending, errors, and more, is crucial for cost management.

When critical cost metrics are placed front-and-center before engineers and their business partners, more sustainable practices emerge organically. Ongoing inspection lets you spot excess spend and tune operations to trim expenses. The return on investment in observability typically far outweighs the expense.

Most importantly, keeping costs in the forefront encourages sustainable practices.

(excerpt from https://thefrugalarchitect.com/) 

Let’s delve deeper

• Lack of visibility into system costs can lead to wasteful habits and inefficiencies.
• Investing in monitoring tools is essential for effective cost management.
• Tracking metrics such as utilization, spending, and errors is crucial for controlling costs.
• Making cost metrics easily accessible to engineers and business partners promotes sustainable practices.
• Ongoing monitoring helps identify excess spending and allows for adjustments to reduce costs.
• The return on investment in visibility tools is significant, leading to more sustainable cost management practices.

 

Apply FinOps principles and AWS Examples

To apply FinOps Foundation principles and AWS services for cost optimization, consider the following:

1. Visibility into System Costs:
• FinOps Principle: Lack of visibility into system costs can lead to wasteful habits and inefficiencies.

·       AWS Example: 

• Use AWS Cost Explorer and AWS Budgets to gain insights into your AWS spending and identify areas for optimization. By understanding your costs, you can make informed decisions to reduce waste and improve efficiency. 
• Implement AWS Organizations and AWS Identity and Access Management (IAM) to manage and govern your AWS accounts effectively. This helps ensure that resources are used efficiently and securely.
1. Investing in Monitoring Tools:
• FinOps Principle: Investing in monitoring tools is essential for effective cost management.

·       AWS Example: 

• Use AWS CloudWatch to monitor your AWS resources and applications in real-time. By setting up alarms and monitoring metrics, you can quickly detect and respond to any cost anomalies or inefficiencies. 
• Utilize AWS Trusted Advisor and AWS Cost Anomaly Detection to identify cost-saving opportunities, such as rightsizing instances, using reserved instances, and leveraging spot instances.
2. Tracking Cost Metrics:
• FinOps Principle: Tracking metrics such as utilization, spending, and errors is crucial for controlling costs.
• AWS Example: Use AWS Cost Explorer to track your AWS spending over time and analyze usage patterns. By monitoring these metrics, you can identify areas where costs can be optimized and take action to reduce unnecessary spending.
3. Making Cost Metrics Accessible:
• FinOps Principle: Making cost metrics easily accessible to engineers and business partners promotes sustainable practices.
• AWS Example: Use AWS Budgets to set custom cost and usage budgets that are easily accessible to your team. By providing visibility into budgeted versus actual spending, you can ensure that everyone is aware of cost targets and can work towards them effectively.
4. Ongoing Monitoring for Cost Reduction:
• FinOps Principle: Ongoing monitoring helps identify excess spending and allows for adjustments to reduce costs.
• AWS Example: 
• Use AWS Cost Explorer to create custom cost reports and analyze spending trends. By regularly reviewing these reports, you can identify opportunities for cost reduction and make informed decisions to optimize your AWS costs.
• Continuously monitor and optimize your costs using AWS Cost Explorer, AWS Budgets, and AWS Cost Anomaly Detection. Regularly review your architecture and usage patterns to identify new optimization opportunities.
• Use AWS Lambda and AWS CloudFormation to automate cost management tasks, such as starting and stopping instances based on usage patterns, and provisioning resources using infrastructure as code.
5. Return on Investment in Visibility Tools:
• FinOps Principle: The return on investment in visibility tools is significant, leading to more sustainable cost management practices.
• AWS Example: 
• Implement AWS Cost Management tools like AWS Budgets, AWS Cost Explorer, and AWS Trusted Advisor to gain visibility into your costs and optimize them. By investing in these tools, you can effectively manage your costs and drive business growth.

 

 A FinOps Odyssey

 

LAW V Cost Aware Architectures Implement Cost Controls.

Dr. Werner’s Cloud FinOps Insights
The essence of frugal architecture is robust monitoring combined with the ability to optimize costs. Well-designed systems allow you to take action on opportunities for improvement. For this to work, decompose applications into tunable building blocks.

A common approach is tiering components by criticality. Tier 1 components are essential; optimize regardless of cost. Tier 2 components are important but can be temporarily scaled down without major impact. Tier 3 components are “nice-to-have”; make them low-cost and easily controlled.

Defining tiers enables trade-offs between cost and other requirements. Granular control over components optimizes both cost and experience. Infrastructure, languages, databases should all be tunable. Architect and build systems with revenue and profit in mind. Cost optimization must be measurable and tied to business impact.

(excerpt from https://thefrugalarchitect.com/)

A FinOps Odyssey

 

Stay tuned for Part – 4 of The FinOps Odyssey