As the demand and cost for cloud computing continue to rise, organizations using Amazon Web Services (AWS) are becoming more mindful of cost optimization. Although there are several AWS in-house tools available to help such businesses optimize their AWS cloud expenses, these tools are severely limited. Yes, they can provide some sort of valuable insights and cost-saving recommendations, but most times, they fail to capture and provide the 360-degree view a business needs to make informed decisions.
For example, native AWS cost monitoring tools might provide basic information on overall expenditure and then lack the granularity needed to pinpoint specific cost drivers. The same could be said of open-source tools; while often customizable, they often fail to offer seamless integration with other business systems, or even aggregate cloud cost from many cloud platforms.
Such tools could make it challenging for businesses to obtain a holistic view of their cloud costs and effectively manage expenses across departments or projects.
In this article, we will explore the top 5 AWS cost optimization free or open-source tools, discuss their shortcomings, and highlight the benefits of using a comprehensive AWS FinOps solution.
This is part of a series of articles about AWS Cost Management.
AWS Billing Dashboard
The AWS billing dashboard provides a comprehensive graphical overview of your AWS cost. It is available in the AWS Management Console and includes charts with an overview of spend, relative monthly spending by service, and actual monthly spending by service – both sorted by usage. The data provided are summaries of historical records and do not constitute a forecast of future editions.
With the AWS Billing Dashboard, customers can gain insights into cost trends, set budget alerts, and access detailed billing reports. Most importantly, you get a user-friendly interface and intuitive visualizations, which should empower your business to effectively manage and optimize its AWS costs.
AWS Billing Dashboard
AWS Cost Explorer is another graphical tool that analyzes expenses. With the Cost Explorer, customers can view the payments of the last 12+ months and statistically forecast the next three months. Also, based on usage patterns, Cost Explorer recommends On-Demand Instances or Reserved Instances (RIs), including instance sizes.
The tool also allows greater control over the visualizations to illustrate patterns of service over different time periods.
AWS Trusted Advisor
AWS Trusted Advisor automatically scans an AWS account and makes recommendations to improve performance, security, reliability, fault tolerance, and reduce costs. While AWS provides a basic set of free security checks, the entire suite requires a Business or Enterprise support plan. These also include cost reviews. AWS Trusted Advisor provides recommendations for cost optimization on the following parameters:
Reference: https://aws.amazon.com/premiumsupport/technology/trusted-advisor/
AWS Lambda Power Tuning
AWS Lambda Power Tuning Is a tool created by the AWS Solutions Architecture team to enhance the performance and cost-effectiveness of AWS Lambda functions. It leverages the concept of finding the right balance between allocated memory and execution time for optimal function performance.
The tool works by performing multiple iterations of a Lambda function, each with a different memory setting. During each iteration, AWS Lambda Power Tuning measures and collects performance metrics such as execution time, CPU utilization, and cost. By analyzing these metrics, the tool determines the ideal memory allocation that maximizes performance while minimizing cost.
Komiser
Another tool that is very popular in the open-source community is Komiser. It is a cloud cost optimization and analysis tool, specifically designed for Amazon Web Services (AWS).
Reference: https://www.komiser.io/
It provides insights and recommendations to help users optimize their AWS costs and improve resource utilization. Here are some key features of Komiser:Although the previously mentioned free tools can be utilized for optimizing cloud expenses, it is crucial to recognize their limitations.
These tools provide valuable insights and basic functionalities but may fall short when it comes to addressing complex optimization scenarios or offering in-depth analysis such as :
AWS Cost Explorer provides high-level cost insights and visualizations, but it lacks one important thing – real-time cost reporting.
Adobe incurred an unexpected cloud bill of over 500k when they inadvertently left a computing job running on Azure; real-time alerting would have helped here. If this could happen to Adobe on Azure, surely you don’t want to leave your cloud operations without real-time cost reporting.
AWS Budgets can send alerts when costs exceed predefined thresholds, but it doesn't support complex cost optimization actions, such as automating instance resizing or scheduling.
it may not offer granular visibility into costs at the resource or tag level. This can make it challenging to identify specific cost drivers or optimize costs for individual resources.
AWS Trusted Advisor provides recommendations for optimizing costs, but it may have limited coverage across all AWS services or hybrid cloud configurations.
For example, Trusted Advisor may offer cost optimization recommendations for EC2 instances, but it may not provide detailed guidance for optimizing other services like RDS or S3.
While an excellent cost optimization platform in its own right, Komiser lacks certain advanced functionalities, such as automated rightsizing recommendations or detailed cost analysis across various AWS services – features that other commercial tools offer. Besides, since it’s not a native AWS tool, it may have a steeper learning curve compared to other cost optimization tools, as it requires familiarity with its configuration, scripting, and customization processes. It may require additional time and effort to set up and configure for specific use cases.
As we learned in the previous section about the limitations of free and native tools for AWS cost optimization, it becomes crucial that organizations seeking more comprehensive and effective solutions should consider proprietary alternatives.
While free or native tools can provide basic cost monitoring and insights, there are several compelling reasons why FinOps solutions like Finout should be preferred for more advanced and effective cost optimization. Such as:
In conclusion, as businesses continue to embrace the flexibility and scalability of AWS, cost optimization becomes a critical component of their cloud strategy. While open-source tools provide a starting point, their limitations prevent them from effectively addressing the complexities of cost management in large-scale production environments.
By adopting a FinOps proprietary solution, you can unlock the full potential of AWS cost optimization.
Related content: