Cloud Optimisation – have it all - lower costs and better performance

, Nov 2, 2021

So congratulations, you’ve migrated what workloads you can to a secure production-ready cloud and have built a hybrid cloud architecture between that and your non-cloud apps and data. You’ve just got on the cloud bus, next stop optimisation.

At this point you’re getting your head around the contradictions that cloud presents you with. The basic principle of cloud is that all services are instantly available on-demand with automated provisioning and unlimited but metered resources – so the optimum configuration uses the least resources at any point in time, without affecting the performance of the workload or breaking any governance. This is counter-intuitive to the last 50 years in the data centre where you would always over-provision resources by sizing systems for peaks and standing up enough capacity for the next 5 years.

If you don’t recognise the difference between these cloud and data centre approaches then you’re in for what is commonly termed ‘bill shock’ at the end of every month – but don’t worry, we can resolve or avoid this situation with optimisation.

There are both commercial and technical optimisation practices for cloud, with the common goal of reducing resource usage and spend down to operating only what’s necessary. Commercial optimisation practices look to get the most out of the spend, while technical optimisation practices look to get the best performance out of the least resources.

Common methods of optimising an environment include:

  • Right-sizing IaaS resources – up to 60% overall cost saving for as-is lift-and-shift migrations
  • Leveraging IaaS Reserved Instances – up to 70% cost saving per workload compared to using on-demand pricing
  • Scheduled shutdown of non-production IaaS environments – up to 50% cost saving per non-production environment
  • Auto-scaling IaaS clustered workloads – up to 40% cost saving per cluster
  • Right-sizing cloud storage volumes – up to 70% cost saving overall
  • Transforming IaaS services to PaaS – up to 66% cost saving per platform

There are tools available from the cloud providers and from third parties to help assess and make recommendations for all of the above methods - some tools will even execute those recommended changes for you. Given that optimisation is a completely new skillset for most organisations, it’s more common to see this as a reason to choose to work with a cloud managed services partner.

At Logicalis we know that optimisation is key to the long-term success of every cloud deployment, so we cater for all scenarios. If you don’t have the tools or the skills, then let us take care of this for you, as optimisation best practices are built into our cloud managed services. If, however, you want to retain the skills then we can deliver platform-based or SaaS optimisation solutions, such as CloudHealth from VMware and Turbonomic from IBM.

Wherever you are on your cloud journey come and talk to us at Logicalis about how you optimise your cloud today and find out how we can help get better results from your cloud by continually optimising it to control costs, performance and governance. Find out more information on our Cloud Optimisation Assessment here

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