Break Free From Bill Shock with AWS Alternatives

 ^All prices are estimates only and may be subject to change because of pricing adjustments and/or unique customer resources. Pricing obtained April 2024.

*Config summary: Tenancy (Shared Instances), Operating System/Software: Free, Number of instances: 593, Provisioning Model: Regular, GCP instance (E2-medium), Committed Use Discounts applied, Internet Egress (Standard Tier: 36,000 GiB),  Persistent Disk (Accompanying): Zonal SSD PD 40 GiB), Northern Virginia

In this blog:

• Introduction
• Reasons For Unpredictable AWS Costs
• What is FinOps
• Exploring GCP as an Alternative to AWS
• Alternative Cloud Solutions
• Exploring OpenStack by OpenMetal as an Alternative to AWS
• AWS vs GCP vs OpenMetal
• AWS Alternative
• GCP Alternative

When it comes to cloud computing, AWS pretty much established the cloud scene and has since maintained its position as a key player in cloud computing. Being one of the oldest cloud providers, AWS has over time developed an extensive suite of offerings and most cloud tools can be integrated into your AWS cloud. It’s an excellent choice for businesses with small workloads that are now tapping into the power of clouds. Public clouds were designed to allow businesses to reap the benefits of cloud technology without having to assume the cost of an entire cloud.

However, like with all products, buying retailed packaged slices is significantly more expensive than a bulk wholesale cloud. And as your workloads grow and you expand your cloud infrastructure your bill grows significantly. Before you know it, your infrastructure solution is no longer cost effective. There are several reasons why AWS customers experience bill shock, here are some of the most common

Reasons for Unpredictable AWS Costs:

Data Transfer Fees is one of the main reasons for AWS bill shock. AWS offers generous allowances for data ingress, however the costs associated with outbound data transfer—especially across regions or to external networks—can quickly spiral out of control. This is particularly true for applications with high data transfer requirements, such as media streaming platforms or data-intensive analytics workloads.

Idle Resources: instances, storage volumes, and other AWS assets that remain active but underutilized. This can be the result of  oversight, misconfiguration, or shifting workload demands. We’ve all seen posts of customers who forgot to turn off resources and were shocked by the bill it accrued. These idle resources accrue costs without delivering value.

Complex Pricing Models: while the AWS pricing structure is comprehensive, it can also be a double-edged sword for customers. The multitude of services, pricing tiers, and usage-based billing models can lead to confusion and miscalculations. Add-ons such as data transfer, storage snapshots, and premium support tiers further complicate the pricing landscape, making it challenging for IT decision makers to anticipate and control expenses accurately.

Being surprised by cloud cost overruns when your budget is already stretched thin by high infrastructure costs can put you in a difficult position. Unpredictable costs can undermine the foundation of budgeting, forecasting, and overall financial management. When faced with cloud cost overage, strategic decisions need to be made. You can make cut backs: reduce resources for your projects, cut back on personnel, or take a FinOps approach to develop a comprehensive solution for your business.

In this blog we will explore cost-effective alternative cloud solutions to Amazon Web Service. Cost-effective here aligns with FinOps principles on managing infrastructure costs. Let’s first briefly outline those. 

What is FinOps?

FinOps is a cultural shift that encourages collaboration between internal operational teams to optimize the costs of cloud services. This allows the efficient use of cloud resources to maximize the value delivered to an organization’s customers.

Principles for Optimizing Cloud Spending

The principles of FinOps are grounded in the ethos of efficiency, optimization, and accountability. Central to the FinOps approach is the concept of “value for money”—ensuring that every dollar spent on cloud services delivers tangible business value. Key strategies used in a FinOps approach to managing infrastructure costs include:

Right-sizing: Optimizing resource allocation to match workload demands and eliminate waste.

Visibility: Everyone who makes decisions that affect cloud costs need to gain transparency into cloud spending and usage patterns. This can be accomplished through monitoring and reporting.

Accountability: It is important to establish clear ownership and accountability for cloud costs within cross-functional teams.

Automation:  With the complexities of a multi cloud system, it’s difficult to manually make changes as needed. It’s wise to leverage automation tools and scripts to streamline provisioning, scaling, and cost management processes.

Continuous Improvement: FinOps is an ongoing process that pivots and alters as the needs of the organization or costs of providers changes. 

^All prices are estimates only and may be subject to change because of pricing adjustments and/or unique customer resources. Pricing obtained April 2024.

*Config summary:  Operating System/Software: Free, Number of instances: 150, Provisioning Model: Regular, OpenMetal V2.1 XL Hosted Private Cloud, AWS Instance (EC2 c6gd.2xlarge), GCP instance (e2-custom-8-16384) Committed Use Discounts applied, Internet Egress (Standard Tier: 36,000 GiB),  Persistent Disk (Accompanying): Zonal SSD PD 40 GiB), Northern Virginia

By transitioning sizable workloads to OpenMetal On-Demand Private Clouds, you can significantly reduce your cloud expenses. This shift will allow you to retain the convenience of being able to scale resources as needed and avoid hardware management. Plus, even without committing to a term contract, you can expect savings of around 60% compared to what public cloud providers offer.

AWS vs GCP vs OpenMetal Recap

What sets OpenMetal apart from public cloud?

OpenMetal offers instant availability of computing resources, similar to public clouds. However, OpenMetal distinguishes itself through the private nature of its cloud cores. Each hyper-converged cloud core, comprising three servers, is exclusively allocated to a single tenant.

As a tenant, you enjoy root level access to your dedicated cloud, empowering you to fine-tune both hardware and software according to your precise requirements. With OpenMetal, you have full authority over your infrastructure, granting you the freedom to implement custom security measures as per your preference.

Currently, OpenMetal clouds are running on OpenStack Yoga and Ceph Quincy. All OpenStack and Ceph updates as well as hardware management is handled by the OpenMetal engineering team.

While AWS and GCP have secured their position on the cloud front, we’re not paying extra for names and reputation. We’re looking at product performance and support. And after careful examination, I’m not convinced that AWS and GCP provide sufficient additional value to justify their significantly higher price tag.

But you don’t have to take my word for it! Experience the power, performance and efficiency of an OpenMetal On-Demand OpenStack Cloud for yourself.

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