What’s the most affordable way to try out OpenShift on AWS?

If this is just for testing, try to stick to a single Availability Zone (AZ) to avoid those pesky inter-AZ transfer fees. And keep the number of public IPs low. You can find the minimum deployment requirements here: https://docs.redhat.com/en/documentation/red_hat_openshift_service_on_aws_classic_architecture/4/html/install_rosa_classic_clusters/deploying-rosa-without-aws-sts#rosa-ec2-instances_prerequisites. If you have an AWS account manager, this might be a good opportunity to ask for some service credits to help with costs.

I'm curious too—what's drawing you to ROSA compared to straight-up EKS?

I might not remember all the details, but if you're going with ROSA, you usually need something like m5.xlarge for at least 3 worker nodes. To save some money, you could avoid using private subnets to cut costs on NAT gateways. Also, be cautious with integrations like CloudWatch; I heard they can run up really high bills.

For the cheapest setup, try this:
* Use **ROSA HCP**, **single-AZ**, and **public API/ingress** to avoid NAT charges.
* Start small: **about 2 m5.xlarge workers** and consider adding a **Spot pool** for extra testing without breaking the bank.
* Minimize add-ons—things like CloudWatch can quickly eat up your budget.
* Set short log retention, and if traffic's low, don’t forget to delete the cluster once you’re done. And remember to ask your AWS/Red Hat rep for trial credits if you have one!