Introduction
‘Cloud’ is one of the most popular terms one can
relate to. The terminology, in terms of its utility and popularity, has gained wide
recognition in the entire gamut of the IT industry. In this article, we try to take a
more detailed approach towards understanding what is cloud, how to align tasks with
cloud infrastructure, the cost involved in a cloud model, how to optimize cost, and
basically how to make the most efficient use of cloud in software deliverables.
Why Cloud?
Remember the time when a software development life cycle
(SDLC) took ages (pun
intended) to be completed. The
organizations mostly followed a step-by-step approach to meet the deliverables schedule.
This was a very tedious process and often the results consisted of erroneous outcomes.
As each phase of SDLC had to be finished within a timeline, it was not possible to go
back to the previous stage for implementing any change and then resuming with the
ongoing process. This traditional approach, known as the ‘Waterfall Model’,
was not iterative in nature, which caused inconveniences.
Over the years, the approach towards software development
took various forms as per industry requirements, and ultimately, we have ended up with
‘Agile’. Agile is simply a methodology of catering to the ‘implement
as per requirement’ approach. With such a humongous set of feature-rich
applications being released, all for the very purpose of meeting the market demands, it
has become imperative to incorporate the end-user requirements in applications with
persistence.
Cloud has thus emerged as a savior in this ever-changing
technology battle, as it provides a robust platform to cope with the dynamic nature of
the software industry. A cloud platform can be thought of as a decentralized
infrastructure, which assists with the server, storage, databases, networking,
analytics, and so on, which are crucial for achieving a consistent and continuous
integration and delivery of a software product. With a cloud infrastructure in place,
the users of the platform can upload their code from any system, irrespective of
location. It also eliminates the hassles of managing and provisioning a software
development environment.
Cloud Optimization
The process of analyzing and configuring essential cloud
resources, which form the core for the applications, infrastructure, and volume of data
to perform, is known as Cloud Optimization. A cloud platform should be scalable enough
to enable the addition of enhancements in any software and thus should facilitate
maximum performance and speedier deliverables.
Cloud Cost Optimization tools:
A cloud optimization tool helps organizations to manage their
expenditures on cloud services by monitoring whether the services align with the
utilization of resources. A cloud cost optimization tool is software that notifies the
user about the least used resource and creates alerts for cost effective packages as per
the use.
There is a wide range of tools in the market, so which one to
choose?
Well, the purpose is to maximize performance at minimized
cost and assessing the capabilities of such tool, and largely focusing on the Return on
Investment (RoI) factors, before opting for it.
Some of the popular cloud cost optimization tools are as
follows:
- Amazon CloudWatch - the tool offers monitoring capabilities that
can be
used by developers, engineers, administrators to keep a check on the resource
usage, thereby deriving actionable insights that aids in performance monitoring,
optimizing resource utilization, and capturing the overall operational health of
the cloud platform
- ParkMyCloud - it is a product by
Turbonomic, which is a SaaS-based platform. It can be very useful in identifying
idle resources and eliminating the need for using such resources. This can save
users from wasted cloud expenditure.
- Nutanix Beam - The tool is XiBeam
and is a great source of cloud cost optimization for public and private clouds. It
has got intelligent resource sizing and sharper accuracy in monitoring utilization
activities.
- AWS Budgets - the tool lets the
user set custom alerts and budgets for cost optimization. Organizations can create
monthly, weekly, or half-yearly reports which outline the budget’s upper
limit, based on a certain amount of use, which when exhausted will be notified to
the user. Thus, one can keep a close vigil on their expenditure on the cloud by
setting limits and getting alerts for the same.
- Azure Cost Management - A product
by Microsoft, Azure Cost Management is a SaaS-based solution that helps
organizations to monitor, allocate, and optimize resources being used in the cloud
environment.
- Cloud Zero - Another cloud cost
optimization model, which lays emphasis on automated cost analysis and keeps up with
the continuous delivery workflow.
- Spot Cloud Analyzer - Spot is a
cloud computing and cost optimization tool which was acquired by NetApp. Users of
this tool can plan a very simplified approach towards provisioning and autoscaling
their cloud infrastructure and control over expenditure on Cloud. The unique feature
of this app is that it provides complete integration of Microsoft Azure’s Spot
Virtual Machines (VM), thus enabling the Azure group of users to benefit from the
combined platform.
- CloudHealth - A product by
VMware, this is a cloud platform that facilitates automated cloud operations,
reduced risk, and control over expenditure. CloudHealth offers integration with
various other cloud solutions such as -
- Amazon Web services - a very
comprehensive cloud platform that offers the most feature-rich data services across
the globe.
- Amazon GuardDuty - an efficient
threat detection mechanism, which helps to monitor malicious and unauthorized
activities in the AWS cloud.
- Amazon SQS - With Amazon Simple
Queue Service (SQS), users can send and receive any volume of data without losing
any message or depending on any additional support.
- Chef - The tool has a very
simplified configuration and management framework, which enables businesses to
build, deploy, and manage any software from anywhere across the globe.
- Docker - This tool offers an
end-to-end experience for developers, as they can develop and scale distributed
applications with a secured approach to enhance efficiency and innovation.
- Datadog - it is a monitoring
service, which gathers data from servers, database applications, and
various services to provide a unified
view of the applications running on the cloud. The features are powered by a
SaaS-based data analytics tool, which provides a collaborative approach for
developers and operations teams to ensure performance problems are solved on
time.
- New Relic - New Relics Software
Analytics Cloud helps organizations to monitor their software in the production
environment, from across any part of the globe. The aim of this organization, New
Relics, is to provide insights into real-time data to more than 15,000 customers,
globally.
Benefits of Cost Optimization tools:
Few noteworthy benefits of cost optimization tools are listed
as follows:
- Keeping Unused Resources under check: Usually, the cloud tools
are designed in a way that it
notifies the user about the daily usage of resources (database, storage,
networks). This is way, it saves the user from paying extra when something is
not of much use. For instance, a Virtual Machine in the cloud environment is no
longer needed, so the platform will notify the user about the same and it could
thus be discontinued.
- Identify Idle Resources: Suppose a
cloud infrastructure is billed for a certain percentage of CPU utilization but the
actual usage might be very less. This is where an efficient cloud optimization
strategy comes into the picture, which should consolidate such different aspects
into fewer resource utilization mechanisms.
- Resource Scheduling: An efficient
cloud optimization model offers automatic scheduling of resources, which means that
the cloud model will detect the least used resources and will discontinue the
services. This is definitely one big merit for using a cloud cost optimization
model, as it is a convenient and efficient way to save expenditures
- Right-sizing and Resource Cleanup: There are always options to
discard the data which is no
longer in use and shall serve no purpose. Choosing the right tool will help automate
this process and scale up in terms of storage space, thereby reducing wastage of
resources
Conclusion
Among the wide range of cloud cost optimization tools
available, the choice of a tool will largely depend on the type of cloud infrastructure,
the volume of resource utilization, and the pace of application development. Any
organization would aim to maximum benefit at minimum cost and therefore we encourage all
the developers and engineers out there to opt for a viable solution, which helps them
build better products for the audience with minimum efforts on the management of
resources used for application development and deployment.
