Data Storage

What are reserved instances?

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Reserved Instances (RIs) are a pricing and capacity reservation offering provided by AWS for their EC2 (Elastic Compute Cloud) and RDS (Relational Database Service) services.

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They specifically allow users to commit to using a specific instance type in the same region for either a one or three-year term, in exchange for discounts of up to 72% – the exact discount is ultimately dependent on the commitment term, instance type, availability zone and region.

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There are various types of Reserved Instances available, each with different terms and levels of flexibility. Standard Reserved Instances provide the highest cost savings but are the least flexible, whereas Convertible Reserved Instances offer more flexibility by allowing you to change instance families within the same instance type.

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In contrast, Scheduled Reserved Instances offer a lower discount, but allow you to reserve capacity for specific time windows, such as business hours or weekends, providing cost savings for predictable workloads.

What is meant by data storage?

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In the context of cloud computing, data storage refers to the process of storing and managing digital information in either a remote server or a data center provided by a cloud service provider such as Amazon Web Services (AWS) or Microsoft Azure.

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The cloud ultimately provides a versatile platform for storing various types of data, whether that be documents, media files, application data, machine learning data or structured data.

What are spot instances?

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As with any cloud service provider, AWS will have spare capacity available to support surges in customer demand. To offset the loss, AWS offers this excess EC2 capacity – in other words, spot instances – at a heavily discounted rate.

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To benefit from these spot instances, users must bid on this unused EC2 capacity in their desired region. The capacity is then allocated to the highest bidder. While it can be a great way to reduce costs by as much as 90%, it is only suitable for workloads that can tolerate interruptions and don’t require continuous availability. This is because AWS will terminate the instance after a two-minute notification in the event that it needs to reclaim the resources, or because the spot price exceeds the bid price. In other words, when other customers are willing to pay more.

What is an instance in the context of cloud computing?

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In cloud computing, an instance refers to a virtual server provided by a third-party cloud service, for example AWS, Azure or Google Cloud. These instances ultimately enable companies to deploy and run their applications or services in the cloud, in a scalable and flexible manner. This is because instances are on-demand and can be adjusted based on your workload requirements.

What is tail spend?

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Tail spend refers to the unmanaged purchases made within an organization that fail to pass through an official procurement process. On account of their low value, the costs incurred by these purchases are seldom monitored by financing teams as they are generally too small to be deemed “strategic”. The problem, however, is that they can make up as much as 20% of a business’ total spend.

What is a reduction clause?

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A reduction clause refers to a provision in a software agreement that allows customers to reduce the number of licenses or users covered by their subscription during the term of an agreement. This provides customers with flexibility to adjust their plan to meet evolving business needs, while avoiding paying for licenses or users they no longer require or needing to terminate the contract. The specific terms and requirements of a reduction clause may vary depending on the SaaS provider and the subscription agreement, for example it may be subject to a minimum number of licenses or users.