3 Ways To Avoid Cloud Waste

Do you know about cloud waste and how it’s impacting your business?

Cloud waste can be a serious issue for companies that aren’t aware it needs to be managed. Adopting cloud services can be hugely beneficial for a business, both in terms of efficiency and cost. However, if there is an excessive amount of wastage within the cloud, the benefits can be diminished considerably. This is why it’s important to avoid cloud waste wherever possible. Fixing this issue can be an easy way to improve bottom line and efficiency within the cloud computing area of a business.

So to find out more about cloud waste and how it can be avoided, read the below article to understand how you can reduce cloud waste.

What is Cloud Waste?

Before we dive into the intricacies of reducing cloud waste, let’s first explain what it is. ‘Cloud waste’ is what people refer to when there are more resources being used by a business in the cloud than it actually needs to operate.

This can happen in a few different ways. Some of the most common are running programs and applications that drain resources 24x7 even when they are not in use. This happens frequently within development, test, demo, and training environments. 

Why Should You Reduce Cloud Waste?

For people within the industry, the implications of cloud waste can be fairly obvious. However if you are just starting out and learning about the subject, it’s not always clear why you should reduce cloud waste. Essentially, cloud waste is costing businesses money that they don’t need to spend and it impacts their bottom line. 

Whereas in the past a business may have been paying for a total package from a datacenter, the cloud pricing model works on a pay-per-use basis. The more you use, the more you pay. So by leaving programs running and using unnecessary resources, you are wasting money.

3 Ways to Avoid Cloud Waste

So with the above topics covered, it’s time to start looking at the strategies you can employ to reduce cloud waste. This subject is quite a large one and can be very technical and complex. This article is designed to point you in the right direction, and explain the strategies on a top level. It is highly recommended to complete further research beyond these points.

Understand you are in the cloud, not a data center

This point was touched upon earlier in the article. Businesses often approach their cloud strategy with the same mindset as if it was a datacenter. There are obviously crossovers between the two approaches, but there are also fundamental differences.

When utilising a data center, one of the main strategies was to make sure you were well provisioned to cover any spikes in usage so your applications wouldn’t get knocked over. This meant having more than was actually needed on a day to day. Within a cloud framework, it is simple and easy to scale up if demand ever requires it.

Reserved Instances

This was touched upon in the previous point. One of the groundbreaking aspects of the cloud was that resources are on demand, you can bring in more or reduce the amount you use almost instantly. However cloud providers also offer reserved instances, which are virtual machines that are always available, no matter if you are using them or not. A business can pay for them in advance on 1 to 3 year contracts and receive large discounts for the commitment. Most cloud providers will help a business work out how much money can be saved using reserved instances. Correctly making use of reserved instances is a great way to save money if you are able to commit to a longer term deal.

Autoparking and Idle Resources

One of the most common issues associated with cloud wastage is idle resource usage. Basically, virtual machines that aren’t doing anything are idling and using resources up. Frequently this is a result of not properly finishing and shutting down from development, staging, and testing projects. To overcome this, it needs to become part of the work process to clean up once particular projects have reached their endpoint.

Cloud waste can have a big impact on businesses and should be addressed quickly. It’s also important to regularly check that the processes put in place are performing as they should. Cleaning up cloud waste can be a quick win business wise to improve margins.