Reserved Instances (RIs) are a pricing model that offers cloud users discounts in return for their long-term commitment to EC2, RDS, and other AWS services. RIs offer better rates than on-demand prices, making it a highly effective way to cut down costs on the cloud. Organizations highly dependent on cloud infrastructure utilize RIs to enjoy higher savings and workflow stability in the long run.
Despite the apparent benefits, Managing RIs in a changing cloud environment can be tricky even for veterans. If you’re not familiar with the variability in instance types, storage classes, or regional and availability zone considerations in comparison to the complexities of your usage patterns, you may end up missing out on big savings or even incur losses due to wasted upfront payments.
And even if you somehow get it right, manually managing RIs to extract the best business value from your commitments is a different ballgame altogether. You’ll find yourself struggling with inefficiencies due to human errors and misjudgments. Optimization becomes a challenge with limited insights and agility. As your business grows, it’ll get even harder to manage your RIs manually, and eventually, saving cloud costs will become an unachievable dream.
Automating is the best way to go!
It’ll not only make your life easier but also increase efficiencies, reduce mistakes, give you ample opportunities to optimize, and allow you flexibility as your business grows. Automating monitoring will also offer more granular insights which will enable you to make smarter decisions to save cloud costs. Automation will also empower you to create a culture of cloud cost accountability within your organization with features like tagging and custom notifications on usage and payments.
Here’s a thorough comparison highlighting the benefits of automating your Reserved Instance Management processes based on various performance indicators:
Criteria | With Automation | Without Automation |
Efficiency | Save time and resources leading to higher efficiencies. | Requires significant manual effort and time investment |
Accuracy | Reduces the possibility of human errors | Higher risk of mistakes due to manual processes |
Optimization | Analyzes usage patterns and optimizes RI utilization | Limited ability to optimize RI portfolio effectively |
Scalability | Scales efficiently to accommodate growth | Becomes increasingly challenging as business grows |
Adaptability | Responds quickly to changes in usage patterns | Difficult to adapt RI portfolio without automation |
Cost Savings | Maximizes AWS cost savings by optimizing resource utilization | Higher possibility of wasted resources and increased costs |
Proactive Monitoring | Offers real-time alerts and notifications for Reserved Instance Management | Manual tracking and monitoring |
Agility | Enables agile management of RIs in dynamic environments | Limited agility without automation |
Automating Reserved Instance management allows you to perform various tasks efficiently and effectively. Here are some of the key activities you can automate:
AWS offers native tools and services like AWS Cost Explorer, AWS Trusted Advisor, AWS Budgets, etc. that can help you efficiently manage your RIs. You can even leverage third-party tools like CloudKeeper Auto which will offer you higher discounts on RIs and will enable you to automate your Reserved Instance Management process.
It’s fairly obvious, with the comparison above, that you’re missing out on higher efficiencies and cost savings if you haven’t implemented automation in your AWS Reserved Instance Management processes. Yes, Automation is the key to unlocking the maximum business value from the cloud enabling you to save big and grow even bigger.
If you’re thinking about – When to automate? If you’re already using RIs, NOW would be a great time to start!
By Aman Aggarwal