Optimize Your AWS Spend with New Cost Savings Features in AWS Trusted Advisor
Imagine the surprise on a customer’s face when they see their AWS bill for the first time after a major project. While the cloud offers incredible flexibility, it can also lead to unexpected expenses if not carefully managed. In the ever-evolving landscape of cloud financial management, Amazon Web Services (AWS) continues to innovate and respond to its customers’ needs. Most recently, AWS has upped the ante by expanding the capabilities of AWS Trusted Advisor with the integration of 15 new cost-saving checks derived from the AWS Cost Optimization Hub. This advancement marks a significant leap towards providing a more consistent and insightful cost savings experience.
A Leap Towards Consistency and Insight
AWS Trusted Advisor has long been the guardian angel for AWS users, offering insights and recommendations across various pillars such as performance, security, and, indeed, cost optimization. However, the recent enhancement reflects customer desires for a more comprehensive toolkit catering specifically to cost management. By integrating these 15 new checks, AWS is promising not just more data, but more meaningful insights into where your money goes and how to manage it better.
Why Embrace the New Cost Optimization Checks?
The enhanced features from the Cost Optimization Hub provide several benefits:
Customized Recommendations: More tailored suggestions to fit your specific resource usage patterns.
Broadened Reach: A wider variety of checks than ever before, making it easier to find and fix inefficiencies.
Consistency in Savings Estimates: Aligning cost savings estimates and recommendations systematically across AWS Trusted Advisor and Cost Optimization Hub.
Getting Started: A Simple Pathway
Subscribing to these new checks is remarkably straightforward and is available to all AWS Trusted Advisor customers. Here’s what you need to do:
Opt-In to the Cost Optimization Hub: Follow the guidance in the Getting Started with Cost Optimization Hub guide.
Enable Compute Optimizer: Necessary for obtaining the complete insights offered by the Cost Optimization Hub recommendations.
This process ensures you’re leveraging the rightsizing and idle recommendations that are critical for financial efficiencies. Note that both products are free, though certain configurations may involve additional considerations.
Diving Deeper: What is Cost Optimization Hub?
At the heart of this innovation lies AWS’s Cost Optimization Hub, a pivotal feature for users striving to make economically sound decisions. It serves as a central dashboard, amalgamating and prioritizing cost-saving recommendations across your AWS landscape. Recommendations span across services, including but not limited to EC2 and RDS, driven by Cost Explorer and AWS Compute Optimizer data.
What sets it apart is its ability to factor in AWS-specific commercial terms, such as Reserved Instances and Savings Plans, ensuring that cost-saving suggestions are not only robust but also realistic.
The New Era of Trusted Advisor Checks
The integration heralds a suite of new checks, but which should you prioritize? The newer checks are lauded for their improved precision and tailored recommendations, based on a thorough analysis of your historical and contextual data usage.
For ongoing users, access to both the legacy and the newer checks remains available, although a strategic shift towards utilizing the new set is encouraged.
Notable New Checks Include:
- Amazon EC2 Cost Optimization for Auto Scaling Groups
- AWS Fargate Cost Optimization Recommendations for ECS
- DynamoDB Reserved Capacity Purchase Recommendations
Each check is designed to provide you with a more detailed view of potential savings, guiding you towards making informed decisions that align with your financial goals.
Conclusion: Evolving with Your Needs
The evolution of AWS Trusted Advisor’s cost-saving capabilities reflects a broader trend within the industry — the increasing importance of financial operations (FinOps) as part of the digital transformation journey. As companies rely more on cloud services, understanding and optimizing costs becomes crucial not just for finance teams but for every stakeholder involved.
With these new tools, AWS empowers its customers, helping them strike a balance between performance and expenditure. Now more than ever, it’s possible to take proactive steps in managing your AWS expenses, ensuring you pay for what you need — and no more. Opt in, integrate, and explore the potential savings waiting in your AWS setup. Let this be the cornerstone of your new, financially-aware cloud strategy.
To share your thoughts on these features, AWS welcomes feedback directly through its console or on AWS re:Post. Your insights will drive the next generation of innovations.
Build smarter, spend wiser, and let AWS Trusted Advisor guide you on this path of optimization.