Fundamentals

About cost optimization fundamentals

The first step in your Cost Optimization journey is to setup your account correctly, and get to know the tools and data available for Cost Optimization. These are a collection of labs that are accessible to anyone that will be working with the cloud, including non-technical roles.

Step 1 - Account Setup

Administrative privileges required This first step will set your organization up correctly for Cost Optimization. It will build an account structure, configure the required data sources and settings, and create a Cost Optimization team with the required permissions to perform Cost Optimization activities.

	This lab requires root access. It is for inital setup so completed only once. If you have a very large or diverse organization with multilpe management/Payer accounts, you should complete it for each management account or cost optimization team that you have.

Step 2 - Cost and Usage Governance - Notifications

Configuring notifications allows you to receive an email when usage or cost is above a defined amount.

	100 Level Lab: This lab will show you how to implement AWS Budgets to provide notifications on usage and spend.

Step 3 - Pricing Models - Savings Plans and Reserved Instances

By using the right pricing model for your workload resources, you pay the lowest price for that resource.

	100 Level Lab: This lab will introduce you to working with Savings Plans (SP’s), utilizing AWS Cost Explorer to make low risk, high return SP purchases for your business.
	200 Level Lab: This lab will introduce you to working with Reserved Instances (RI’s), utilizing AWS Cost Explorer to make low risk, high return RI purchases for your business.

Step 4 - Monitor Usage and Cost - Analysis

Cost and Usage Analysis will enable you to understand how you consumed the cloud, and what your costs are for that consumption.

	100 Level Lab: This lab introduces you to the billing console, allowing you to view your current and past bills, and also inspect your usage across services and accounts.

Step 5 - Monitor Usage and Cost - Visualization

Visualizing cost and usage highlights trends and allows you to gain further insights.

	100 Level Lab: This lab will introduce AWS Cost Explorer, and demonstrate how to use its features to provide insights.

Step 6 - Govern Usage and Cost - Controls

Implementing usage controls will ensure excess usage and accompanying costs does not occur.

	200 Level Lab: This lab will extend the permissions of the Cost Optimization team, then utilize Identity and Access Management (IAM) policies to control and restrict usage.

Step 7 - Monitor Usage and Cost - Advanced Analysis

Advanced analysis using your Cost and Usage Report (CUR) will allow you to answer the most challenging questions on your usage and cost. It is the most detailed source of information on your cost and usage available.

	200 Level Lab: This lab will utilize Amazon Athena to provide an interface to query the CUR, provide you the most common customer queries, and help you to build your own queries.

Step 8 - Monitor Usage and Cost - Advanced Visualization

Utilizing the CUR data source in the previous step, you can provide more detailed and custom visualizations and dashboards.

	200 Level Lab: This Lab extends the previous step, utilizing Amazon Quicksight to visualize the CUR data source.