AWS Architecture Blog

Category: AWS Cloud Financial Management

Let's Architect

Let’s Architect! Cost-optimizing AWS workloads

Every software component built by engineers and architects is designed with a purpose: to offer particular functionalities and, ultimately, contribute to the generation of business value. We should consider fundamental factors, such as the scalability of the software and the ease of evolution during times of business changes. However, performance and cost are important factors […]

Let's Architect

Let’s Architect! Optimizing the cost of your architecture

Written in collaboration with Ben Moses, AWS Senior Solutions Architect, and Michael Holtby, AWS Senior Manager Solutions Architecture Designing an architecture is not a simple task. There are many dimensions and characteristics of a solution to consider, such as the availability, performance, or resilience. In this Let’s Architect!, we explore cost optimization and ideas on […]

Account structure and architecture diagram

Email delta cost usage report in a multi-account organization using AWS Lambda

AWS Organizations gives customers the ability to consolidate their billing across accounts. This reduces billing complexity and centralizes cost reporting to a single account. These reports and cost information are available only to users with billing access to the primary AWS account. In many cases, there are members of senior leadership or finance decision makers […]

Data transfer charges across AZs and AWS services

Journey to Cloud-Native Architecture Series #6: Improve cost visibility and re-architect for cost optimization

After we improved our security posture in the 5th blog of the series, we discovered that operational costs are growing disproportionately higher than revenue. This is because the number of users grew more than 10 times on our e-commerce platform. To address this, we created a plan to better understand our AWS spend and identify cost […]

AZ Affinity implemented using AWS Cloud Map for service discovery

Improving Performance and Reducing Cost Using Availability Zone Affinity

One of the best practices for building resilient systems in Amazon Virtual Private Cloud (VPC) networks is using multiple Availability Zones (AZ). An AZ is one or more discrete data centers with redundant power, networking, and connectivity. Using multiple AZs allows you to operate workloads that are more highly available, fault tolerant, and scalable than […]

Figure 2. A serverless architecture representing data workflow

Building a Showback Dashboard for Cost Visibility with Serverless Architectures

Enterprises with centralized IT organizations and multiple lines of businesses frequently use showback or chargeback mechanisms to hold their departments accountable for their technology usage and costs. Chargeback involves actually billing a department for the cost of their division’s usage. Showback focuses on visibility to make the department more cost conscientious and encourage operational efficiency. […]

Field Notes: Automating Migration Requests for Reserved Instances and Savings Plans in Closed Accounts

Enterprise AWS customers are often managing many accounts under a payer account, and sometimes accounts are closed before Reserved Instances (RI) or Savings Plans (SP) are fully used. Manually tracking account closures and requesting RI and SP migration from the closed accounts can become complex and error prone. This blog post describes a solution for automating […]