AWS Cost Operations

Cost optimization and operations management with CloudWatch alarms, operations patterns, and cost monitoring strategies.

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Overview

Monitor, analyze, and optimize AWS costs while maintaining operational excellence with automated alerts and best practices.

Cost Monitoring

AWS Cost Explorer

Visualize spending patterns
Identify cost drivers
Forecast future costs
Track cost trends

AWS Budgets

Set spending limits
Get budget alerts
Track against targets
Forecast overruns

Cost Allocation Tags

Organize resources
Track by team/project
Enable cost attribution
Improve visibility

CloudWatch Alarms

Billing Alarms

new cloudwatch.Alarm(this, 'BillingAlarm', {
  metric: new cloudwatch.Metric({
    namespace: 'AWS/Billing',
    metricName: 'EstimatedCharges',
    statistic: 'Maximum',
  }),
  threshold: 100,
  evaluationPeriods: 1,
});

Service-Specific Alarms

EC2 usage
Lambda invocations
S3 storage
DynamoDB consumption
Data transfer

Cost Optimization Strategies

Compute

Right-size EC2 instances
Use Savings Plans
Leverage Spot Instances
Auto-scaling groups
Lambda instead of always-on

Storage

S3 lifecycle policies
Glacier for archives
Delete unused EBS volumes
Use EFS Intelligent-Tiering
Compress data

Database

Right-size RDS instances
Use Aurora Serverless
DynamoDB on-demand
Delete unused databases
Enable auto-pause

Networking

Use VPC endpoints
CloudFront caching
Optimize data transfer
Delete unused NAT gateways
Use S3 Transfer Acceleration wisely

Operations Patterns

Automated Cleanup

Unused resources
Old snapshots
Detached volumes
Idle load balancers
Stale AMIs

Resource Scheduling

Start/stop dev environments
Scale down non-production
Weekend shutdowns
After-hours reduction

Reserved Capacity

Analyze usage patterns
Purchase RIs for steady-state
Use Savings Plans
Evaluate regularly

Monitoring Dashboard

Create comprehensive dashboards:

Total monthly cost
Cost by service
Cost by team/project
Trending costs
Budget vs actual
Forecast

Best Practices

Tagging Strategy

Environment (dev/prod)
Team/Department
Project/Application
Cost Center
Owner

Regular Reviews

Weekly cost review
Monthly optimization
Quarterly planning
Annual budget setting

Automation

Automated cleanup scripts
Resource scheduling
Alert notifications
Cost reports

Cost Anomaly Detection

Enable AWS Cost Anomaly Detection:

Machine learning-based
Automatic anomaly alerts
Root cause analysis
Spending patterns

Tools & Services

AWS Cost Explorer
AWS Budgets
AWS Cost Anomaly Detection
AWS Compute Optimizer
AWS Trusted Advisor
CloudWatch
Cost & Usage Reports

Implementation Example

// Budget with alerts
new budgets.CfnBudget(this, 'MonthlyBudget', {
  budget: {
    budgetName: 'monthly-budget',
    budgetLimit: { amount: 1000, unit: 'USD' },
    timeUnit: 'MONTHLY',
    budgetType: 'COST',
  },
  notificationsWithSubscribers: [{
    notification: {
      notificationType: 'ACTUAL',
      comparisonOperator: 'GREATER_THAN',
      threshold: 80,
    },
    subscribers: [{
      subscriptionType: 'EMAIL',
      address: 'team@example.com',
    }],
  }],
});

Reporting

Generate regular reports:

Cost by service
Cost trends
Savings achieved
Optimization opportunities
Budget adherence

Skills