AWS Pricing & Billing

By Admin on August 17, 2022 in

EC2 Pricing & Billing Options

Overview of AWS Pricing Options

On-Demand – for short workloads, pay by second

Reserved – 1 or 3 years – for long workloads

Convertible Reserved – long workloads with flexible instances

Savings Plans – 1 or 3 years – commits to a fixed usage, for long workloads

Spot – short workloads, can be cancelled at any time by AWS according to general load of other customers, very cheap

Dedicated Host – book entire physical machine and control instance placement

Dedicated Instance – no other customers share hardware

Capacity Reservation – reserve capacity in a specific AZ (Availability Zone) for later use

Pricing Options in Detail

On-Demand

has highest cost, no long-term commitment, best for short-term loads

Reserved Instances

72% max discount vs on-demand, you reserve specific instance attributes

specify reservation period eg 1 year

payment – upfront or not upfront, discount for upfront

scope – in specific region or AZ

recommended for stead state loads eg database apps

you can buy and sell them in the reserved instance AWS marketplace

Convertible Reserved Instance

allows you to change the EC2 instance spec

Savings Plans

discount acc to long term usage as for Reserved up to 72%

commit to certain type of usage, eg $10 per hr for 1 or 3 yrs

Usage beyond this is billed at on-demand price

but you are locked to a specific instance type and region

however you can change instance size and OS, and tenancy – host, dedicated default – can change this

Spot instances

up to 90% discount

the most cost-efficient

good for resilient to failure loads, eg batch jobs, data analysis, flexible jobs

NOT suited to databases!

Dedicated Hosts

you get a physical server dedicated to your own usage

advantageous for compliance requirements and server/hw-bound licenses for software eg per socket/core/CPU etc

the most expensive option in AWS

can be on demand pay per second

or reserved – 1 or 3 yrs with no-upfront, partial upfront, no upfront

Dedicated Instances

run on hw dedicated to you, but you may share the hw with others in the SAME ACCOUNT

but you don’t have access to the actual hardware, unlike dedicated host – important difference

no control over instance placement

suitable for short-term uninterrupted workloads that need to run in a specific AZ

AWS Pricing Calculator

The AWS Pricing Calculator is a web-based planning tool for creating budget estimates for your AWS projects before building them.

AWS Pricing Calculator is available free of charge via a web-based console at https://calculator.aws/#/

You do NOT need an AWS account in order to use the Pricing Calculator.

It provides an estimate of your AWS fees and charges, but the estimate doesn’t include any applicable local sales taxes.

AWS – Setting Up A Billing Budget

By Admin on August 16, 2022 in

In order to grant permissions to your admin user to use billing, you must first login as your AWS Root Account

In AWS Management Console -> My Account:

Then click on IAM User and Role Access to Billing Information

edit -> activate IAM Access and click update

then you can go to your admin user account in the AWS Management Console (logout of root) and you should now have access permission to Billing and Cost Management Dashboard.

You can call up your bills, and see exactly what charges are being incurred for which service and for which time period.

You can also display the Free Tier Services

Next, set up a cost budget. Choose a recurring fixed budget and set a value eg 10 USD for the course.

Set at least one threshold alert to send an email when this is reached, eg at 80%

and also a forecast alert, eg 60% if it looks like this will be reached, you will be sent an email.