Data Storage

What is meant by data storage?

‍
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.

‍
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 is Cloud Cost Optimization?

‍
Cloud cost optimization refers to the process of reducing and optimizing cloud spending, while ensuring optimal resource utilization and maintaining desired performance levels. It ultimately involves managing cloud costs without compromising business objectives or user experience.

What is maverick buying?

‍
Maverick spending, also known as rogue spending, can be defined as any purchasing that takes place within an organization, outside of an established procurement process.

‍
In the context of SaaS, maverick spending refers to the acquisition of cloud-based software solutions that are purchased unbeknownst to the finance, IT or procurement teams, and in a way that does not comply with the organization’s formal IT procurement process — and so may not be approved, vetted, or appropriately documented.

What are spot instances?

‍
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.

‍
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 FinOps?

‍
FinOps refers to financial operations. In relation to cloud technology, Cloud Financial Operations is a practice that focuses on aligning cloud costs with business objectives and improving overall financial management in the cloud. When implemented correctly, it can provide you with a better understanding of your cloud spending patterns, enabling you to make more informed decisions on how to allocate and manage your costs.

What are reserved instances?

‍
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.

‍
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.

‍
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.

‍
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.