techlist.io
KR EN

finops

3 posts

aws

Introducing Database Savings Plans for AWS Databases (opens in new tab)

AWS has expanded its flexible pricing model to include managed database services with the launch of Database Savings Plans, offering up to 35% cost reduction for consistent usage. By committing to a specific hourly spend over a one-year term, customers can maintain cost efficiency across multiple accounts, resource types, and AWS Regions. This initiative simplifies financial management for organizations running diverse data-driven and AI applications while providing the agility to modernize architectures without losing discounted rates. ### Flexibility and Modernization Support * The plan allows customers to switch between different database engines and deployment types, such as moving from provisioned instances to serverless options, without affecting their savings. * Usage is portable across AWS Regions, enabling global organizations to shift workloads as business needs evolve while retaining their commitment benefits. * The model supports ongoing cost optimization by automatically applying discounts to new instance types, sizes, or eligible database offerings as they become available. ### Service Coverage and Tiered Discounts * Database Savings Plans cover a wide array of services, including Amazon Aurora, RDS, DynamoDB, ElastiCache, DocumentDB, Neptune, Keyspaces, Timestream, and AWS DMS. * Serverless deployments offer the most significant savings, providing up to 35% off standard on-demand rates. * Provisioned instances across supported services deliver discounts of up to 20%. * Specific workloads for Amazon DynamoDB and Amazon Keyspaces receive tailored rates, with up to 18% savings for on-demand throughput and up to 12% for provisioned capacity. ### Implementation and Cost Management * Customers can purchase and manage these plans through the AWS Billing and Cost Management Console or via the AWS CLI. * Discounts are applied automatically on an hourly basis to all eligible usage; any consumption exceeding the hourly commitment is billed at the standard on-demand rate. * Integrated cost management tools allow users to analyze their coverage and utilization, ensuring spend remains predictable even as application usage patterns fluctuate. For organizations with stable or growing database requirements, Database Savings Plans offer a low-risk path to reducing operational expenses. Customers should utilize the AWS Cost Explorer to analyze their historical usage and determine an appropriate hourly commitment level to maximize their return on investment over a one-year term.

finopsawsserverlessamazon-rds+4
coupang

Optimizing Operating Costs through Cloud Service (opens in new tab)

Coupang’s Finance and Engineering teams collaborated to optimize cloud expenditures by focusing on resource efficiency and the company's "Hate Waste" leadership principle. Through a dedicated optimization project team and the implementation of data-driven analytics, the company successfully reduced on-demand costs by millions of dollars without compromising business growth. This initiative transformed cloud management from a reactive expense into a proactive engineering culture centered on financial accountability and technical efficiency. ### Forming the Optimization Project Team * A specialized team consisting of Cloud Infrastructure Engineers and Technical Program Managers (TPMs) was established to bridge the gap between finance and engineering. * The project team focused on educating domain teams about the variable cost model of cloud services, moving away from a fixed-cost mindset. * Technical experts helped domain teams identify opportunities to use cost-efficient technologies, such as ARM-based AWS Graviton processors and AWS Spot Instances for data processing. * The initiative established clear ownership, ensuring that each domain team understood and managed their specific cloud resource usage. ### Analytics and Dashboards for Visibility * Engineers developed custom dashboards using Amazon Athena to process Amazon CloudWatch data, providing deep insights into resource performance. * The team utilized AWS Cost & Usage Reports (CUR) within internal Business Intelligence (BI) tools to provide granular visibility into spending patterns. * Finance teams worked alongside engineers to align technical roadmaps with monthly and quarterly budget goals, making cost management a shared responsibility. ### Strategies for Usage and Cost Reduction * **Spend Less (Usage Reduction):** Coupang implemented automation to ensure that non-production environment resources were only active when needed, resulting in a 25% cost saving for those environments. * **Pay Less (Right-sizing):** The team analyzed usage patterns to manually identify and decommission unused EC2 resources across all domain teams. * **Instance and Storage Optimization:** The project prioritized migrating workloads to the latest instance generations and optimizing Amazon S3 storage structures to reduce costs for data at rest. To achieve sustainable cloud efficiency, organizations should move beyond simple monitoring and foster an engineering culture where resource management is a core technical discipline. Prioritizing automated resource scheduling and adopting modern, high-efficiency hardware like Graviton instances are essential steps for any large-scale cloud operation looking to maximize its return on investment.

finopsawsamazon-ec2amazon-s3+3
coupang

Cloud expenditure optimization for cost efficiency (opens in new tab)

Coupang addressed rising cloud costs by establishing a cross-functional Central team to bridge the gap between engineering usage and financial accountability. Through a data-driven approach involving custom analytics and automated resource management, the company successfully reduced on-demand expenditure by millions of dollars. This initiative demonstrates that aligning technical infrastructure with financial governance is essential for maintaining growth without unnecessary waste. **The Central Team and Data-Driven Governance** * Coupang formed a specialized Central team consisting of infrastructure engineers and technical program managers to identify efficiency opportunities across the organization. * The team developed custom BI dashboards utilizing Amazon CloudWatch, AWS Cost and Usage Reports (CUR), and Amazon Athena to provide domain teams with actionable insights into their spending. * The finance department partnered with engineering to enforce strict budget compliance, ensuring that domain teams managed their resources within assigned monthly and quarterly limits. **Strategies for Spending and Paying Less** * The company implemented "Spending Less" strategies by automating the launch of resources in non-production environments only when needed, resulting in a 25% cost reduction for those areas. * "Paying Less" initiatives focused on rightsizing, where the Central team worked with domain owners to manually identify and eliminate unutilized or underutilized EC2 resources. * Workloads were migrated to more efficient hardware and pricing models, specifically leveraging ARM-based AWS Graviton processors and AWS Spot Instances for data processing and storage. **Targeted Infrastructure Optimization** * Engineering teams focused on instance generation alignment, ensuring that services were running on the most cost-effective hardware generations available. * Storage costs were reduced by optimizing Amazon S3 structures at rest, improving how data is organized and stored. * The team refined Amazon EMR (Elastic MapReduce) configurations to enhance processing efficiency, significantly lowering the cost of large-scale data analysis. To achieve sustainable cloud efficiency, engineering organizations should move beyond viewing cloud costs as a purely financial concern and instead treat resource management as a core technical metric. By integrating financial accountability directly into the engineering workflow through shared analytics and automated resource controls, companies can foster a culture of efficiency that supports long-term scalability.

finopsawsamazon-s3amazon-athena+4