Cloud computing has revolutionized the way businesses operate, providing them with the flexibility and scalability they need to grow. However, with this flexibility comes a level of complexity in managing costs that can lead to unexpected bills and debt. In this article, we will discuss the importance of FinOps, a framework that bridges the gap between finance and operations in cloud environments, and introduce some tools that can help optimize cloud costs.
The Problem with Cloud Bills
Cloud bills can be complex and difficult to understand, which can lead to unexpected costs. According to a report by CloudZero, companies are estimated to waste as much as 30% of their cloud budgets due to issues with cloud cost management. This is a significant problem because it not only leads to financial losses but also hampers business growth and innovation.
The Role of FinOps
FinOps is a set of practices and a community that aim to bring financial accountability to the variable spend model of cloud. It involves deep analysis into expenditures and usage, allocation of costs to business units, and optimization of spending on cloud resources, all through a shared language and process to communicate about costs and allows for financial accountability in cloud spending. This is crucial because it empowers organizations to make more informed decisions about their cloud spending, leading to cost savings and more efficient use of resources.
Infracost: A Tool for Cost Estimation
Infracost is an open source tool that provides cloud cost estimates for infrastructure in pull requests. This allows developers break down usage and allows them to estimate costs even before provisioning resources, creating a more cost-aware engineering culture. Infracost offers cost guardrails and policies that monitor all changes and alert engineers and team leads if a change is going to break budgets, some it’s features :
- Detailed cost breakdown to attribute expenditure to teams.
- Cost estimates for Terraform, CloudFormation, Kubernetes and more.
- Monitoring and alerts when costs exceed thresholds.
Komiser
Komiser is an open source cost management tool for Kubernetes and cloud environments. It brings finance, IT, procurement, and business functions together to create a cost-conscious culture across the organization. It helps enterprises address the complexity of cloud bills and lower the total cost of ownership in different ways such as tagging, cost mapping, right-sizing, removing waste, volume discounts, etc.
Komiser has it’s own UI that showcases its most usefull features:
- Cost breakdown by namespace, label, pod, etc.
- Usage metrics visualization.
- Anomaly detection in spend.
- Forecast future cost based on historical data.
Cloudcost
In addition to the previously mentioned tools, there’s another tool that can help you manage your cloud costs more effectively. Cloudcost is a CLI tool that retrieves pricing information for Azure services directly from the terminal. While it might not be a FinOps tool in the strictest sense, it’s a valuable tool for understanding the costs you can expect to incur when using Azure services.
Conclusion
In a world where cloud computing is the norm, managing cloud costs effectively is crucial. By adopting FinOps practices and using tools like Infracost and Komiser, businesses can gain better control over their cloud spending, reduce costs, and make more informed decisions about their cloud infrastructure. It’s time for businesses to think more about FinOps and the tools that can help them manage their cloud costs effectively.