Reducing AWS / RDS Spend

/via https://www.networkcomputing.com/cloud-infrastructure/when-aws-goes-awry/1164227596

Herewith some fairly obvious pointers on what to look at when it comes to reducing your AWS / RDS spend.

• Instance Size : Obvious, but is your instance small enough? Or, heave-forfend, big enough?
• Storage Type : Obvious, but are you using the right type of storage? Do you really need io1?
• Data : Why for you storing everything in RDS? Slap it in S3/CloudFront, and use a pointer!
• Usage : aka “Tune your DB”. The correct index might obviate the need for a db.m4.16xlarge 
• Archival : Do you really need all that data in RDS? Clobber your old data, once you’re done with it!
• Data Transfer : Yeah, here’s where you’ll definitely get nailed. Moving data out of each instance dips into your wallet. That includes backups, multi-AZ, remote transfers, and whatnot.

Of the above, Data Transfer is one of those things you really, really need to think about beforehand. It’s the easiest thing to (poorly) architect, and fixing it after you’ve baked out your system can be a serious PITA — what with having to reshuffle your VPCs, routes, etc.

And yeah, Usage is a wee bit trickier, in that it correlates directly to Instance Size and Storage Type, but hey, you’d be surprised at how dumb some of the schemas I’ve seen are! (•)

(•) Ok, maybe not surprised. Django / Phoenix / … have a lot to answer for in this respect…