Hey folks! I'm in the middle of reviewing our virtual machines to find ways to cut costs. I'm trying to figure out whether going for reserved instances or opting for scheduled downtime would save us more money. Is there a general guideline on this? Should we aim for scheduled downtime for non-production VMs and reserved instances for production ones?
5 Answers
I think it's less about whether a VM is non-prod or prod and more about the specific use case. If you need a VM and its hosted applications to be available all the time, then reserved instances might be worth it. Otherwise, you're just throwing money away if the service doesn't need to be 24/7.
Just a rough estimate: if you're going to have over 30% to 66% downtime, consider shutdowns instead of committing to long-term reservations. Otherwise, it might not be worth it.
Instead of reservations, have you considered Savings Plans? They can offer flexibility, though be cautious since they involve significant and non-refundable commitments. But if shutting down makes sense for you, definitely prioritize that!
I always recommend going for reservations for the long haul. Plus, you can reach out to support, and they'll provide guidance tailored to your budget and usage needs.
Our approach is to use spot instances for non-production environments and reserved instances for production. It keeps costs down while ensuring production services are reliably hosted.
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