Well Architected Framework WP - Cost Optimization

Question 1

Cost Optimization Pillar

Answer 1

pay lowest possible price while achieving business objectives

Question 2

Cost Optimization Design Principles

Answer 2

transparently attribute expenditure

Use managed service to reduce cost of ownership

Swap capital expense for operating expense

Benefit from economies of scale

Stop spending on data center operations

Question 3

Cost optimization definition - 4 areas

Answer 3

match supply and demand

cost effective resources

expenditure awareness

optimizing over time

Question 4

Match supply and demand best practice

Answer 4

don’t over or under provision

Use things like autoscaling, or lambda which only responds when there’s a request

Use cloud watch to track demand

Question 5

2 supply and demand questions

Answer 5

how do make sure capacity matches but doesn’t exceed requirements

how are you optimizing AWS usage

Question 6

cost effective resources - best practices

Answer 6

using correct instance type is critical.

i.e. run app on T2 micro takes 7 hours and running it on M4.2 Large takes minutes. T2 Micro costs more because took longer

Question 7

3 cost effective resources questions

Answer 7

Have you selected appropriate resource types for cost targets?

Have you selected appropriate pricing model to meet cost targets?

Are there managed service that will improve ROI

Question 8

Expenditure Awareness best practices

Answer 8

AWS lets you provision things immediately but that has its own issues.

Be aware of what each team is spending and how

If org has multiple AWS accounts, consolidate billing, use cost allocation tags, billing alerts

Question 9

Expenditure Awareness questions

Answer 9

what access controls and procedures do you have to govern AWS costs

How do you monitor spending and use

how do you decommission resources, or temporarily stop them, to ensure costs don’t accrue

how do you consider data transfer charges

Question 10

Optimizing over time

Answer 10

AWS changes frequently. A service chosen yesterday may not be the best one today

Follow the AWS blog and use Trusted Advisor

Question 11

Optimizing over time questions

Answer 11

how do you mange the adoption of new services

Question 12

Key AWS Services for these 4 Cost Optimization Areas

Answer 12

Matched supply and demand:
autoscaling

Cost effective resources:
EC2 reserved instances, Trusted Advisor

Expenditure Awareness:
Cloudwatch alarms, SNS, historically consolidated billing and billing alerts

Optimizing over time:
AWS blog, AWS Trusted Advisor

Question 13

How does AWS recommend optimizing speed for SQS buffer-based approach of matching supply / demand

Answer 13

Add EC2 Spot Instances

Question 14

How does AWS recommend handling duplicate messages with SQS for buffer-based approach of matching supply / demand

Answer 14

Use FIFO Queues for exactly once processing

Question 15

How does AWS recommend optimizing Kinesis for buffer-based approach of matching supply / demand

Answer 15

Provision a table in DynamoDB (a NoSQL db)

use idempotent processing so if message processed multiple times, no effect downstream

Question 16

For time-based matching of supply / demand, can you use API’s to scale the instance size or class? How?

Answer 16

Yes

stop and start instance and choose different size or class. Can also do this for resources like EBS where you can snapshot and restore to a volume with more IOPS or different volume type

Question 17

For time-based matching of supply / demand, what are the key services?

Answer 17

Auto Scaling and CloudFormation for templates

Question 18

3 AWS ways of matching supply and demand

Answer 18

Demand-based
Buffer-based
Time-based

Question 19

For demand-based matching of supply/demand what are the key services?

Answer 19

Autoscaling, ELB, Cloudwatch

Question 20

How do you use the Reserved Instance Utilization Report?

Answer 20

to visualize your reserved instance utilization and find opportunities to increate your usage efficiency.

ie by modifying RI types or shifting workloads

Question 21

How do you use the Reserved Instance Coverage Report?

Answer 21

to see how much of your overall instance usage is covered by reserved instances, so you can know if you should modify or purchase RI’s

Question 22

How do you use the billing and cost management service?

Answer 22

to define budgets at aggregate or granular level

Question 23

How do you use the detailed billing report with resources and tags (DBR-rt)?

Answer 23

To see hourly use and charges for all chargeable AWS services

Gives insight to cost and usage of systems on hourly basis

Can use Redshift to ingest this data and build app to report on it

Question 24

Is the billing and cost management service integrated with IAM service?

Answer 24

Yes. Use IAM with it to control access to financial data and billing console

Question 25

2 methods to organize and manage AWS costs

Answer 25

account structuring

tagging

Question 26

Describe Account Structuring

Answer 26

parent-children structure
per account and linked accounts

Lets you assign accounts to different organizations in the company and have one paying account to oversee them

Question 27

Describe Consolidated billing and one big benefit

Answer 27

construct between linked accounts and the payer account for oversight

maximizes volume discounts for services, reserved instances, etc.

Question 28

Describe Tagging for cost optimization

Answer 28

AWS adds your tags to billing and cost allocation reports

allows higher levels of automation, ie list all resources with a “test” tag and delete or terminate them.

Useful for automating shutting down test environment at end of day

Question 29

Describe lifecycle tracking for cost optimization

Answer 29

way of tracking entities that are no longer needed

AWS config gives detailed inventory of resources
CloudTrail and CloudWatch establish record of resource events
IAM managed groups, users, roles and federation

Question 30

Key AWS Services for Expenditure Awareness

Answer 30

AWS Billing and Cost Management

Cost Explorer to visualize costs
Tagging to overlay business and org info to billing data
CloudWatch Alerts for billing alerts

Question 31

2 main ways to optimize over time in AWS

Answer 31

Measure, Monitor, Improve

Staying ever green (move to newest services, features)

Question 32

Describe the measure, monitor, improve method

Answer 32

perform gap analysis showing how system utilization aligns to requirements by measuring, monitoring users and applications

Work to minimize the gap

Question 33

4 ways to minimize utilization gap

Answer 33

establish cost optimization function

establish goals and metrics

gather insight and perform analysis

report and validate

Question 34

Describe staying evergreen

Answer 34

AWS frequently releases new services and features, so review your architecture to ensure it stays cost effective.

Be aggressive at decommissioning resources, components, workloads that are no longer needed

Question 35

Key AWS Service for optimizing over time

Answer 35

AWS Trusted Advisor,

AWS Blog and What’s new section of website