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12 for '21 Cloud Optimization Series - Number One: Shut it Down

Shut it off. Simple right? Sounds like something you might say to your children whenever they leave the light on in a room. But like any endeavor, shutting off instances in the cloud does take some amount of wherewithal and effort. Begin by identifying idle and under-utilized instances out of your fleet. By leveraging native analytics (e.g. AWS Trusted Advisor, AWS CloudWatch, Azure Advisor, Google Compute Engine), you can generate a list of these instances across regions and workloads. After a quick audit with your technology team or application owners, you can take a step toward savings realization by: Terminating/deleting idle instances ...

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AWS Outage: Plan Ahead to Avoid Future Catastrophe

AWS experienced a significant outage on November 21st, 2020 that impacted customers located in one (US-East-1) of AWS’ 23 geographic regions. The region was significant however, given the number of companies that publicly stated their issues via social media channels: Coinbase Glassdoor iRobot – impacted home app which, according to LinkedIn security employee, effected his ability to vacuum home Roku Vonage The Washington Post Ring doorbells started not working And more… According to a report by ZDnet, AWS attributed the outage “to errors with its Kinesis data-streaming service. While many of the impacted services don't use AWS Kinesis, ...

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Cloud Cost Optimization: Moving Mountains With Shovels

The front lines of the Cloud Cost Optimization battle are not going well for many. Sadly, the worst part of the story is, that most don’t even know it yet. As Cloud investments go deeper and broader throughout corporate computing environments, so too is the waste and damage to IT budgets. I’ve been in IT long enough to witness hundreds of companies implement and manage thousands of different environments with hundreds of various suppliers. Suffice it to say, I’ve been around. So, when I tell you that waste and overspend on Cloud are at frightening levels, you should pay attention when I share why, and what you might be able to do about it. ...

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Why You Shouldn't Trust Cloud Vendor Pricing Calculators

Dave Young
Jul. 29,2020 | Cloud Azure AWS google

Lately we have seen a rise in cloud customers reliance on widely available online tools that purport to help an enterprise calculate everything from pricing, usage workloads to TCO. Some of the primary tools often cited are: Azure Pricing Calculator AWS Pricing Calculator AWS Total Cost of Ownership Oracle Cloud Workload Estimator Google Pricing Calculator We are here to confirm what your likely first instincts are when attempting to use these tools, which is they are wrong, a futile exercise, and probably biased, given the hundreds of data points and variables in every cloud environment. Wrong First, they are wrong. Always.  Maybe it’s a ...

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Cloud Compute Herd: 4 Myths That Could Save You Millions

Like a migrating herd of Wildebeest across the Serengeti, companies around the globe continue its rush toward that shimmering lake of Cloud Compute that promises lowers costs, increased flexibility and scalability (and more according to the brochures). As with any panacea, the dream usually falls short of the reality. Cloud compute for many has hit that ‘middle ground’ where actual benefits and unexpected problems meet. As the body of problem evidence mounts for Cloud Compute, there are some clear myths that have arisen that need to be ‘debunked’. Only when these myths are fully understood can organizations minimize the risks and still ...

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