‍In today's ever-evolving digital world, businesses increasingly depend on cloud services to drive operations, spur innovation, and foster growth. 

However, while the cloud offers convenience and scalability, it presents potential challenges, particularly in cost management. As companies embrace cloud computing, they often face skyrocketing expenses if they fail to monitor and optimize effectively. 

In this blog, we will explore essential best practices for optimizing cloud costs, enabling businesses to navigate the complexities of cloud spending and maximize return on investment. From utilizing cost-monitoring tools to implementing efficient resource allocation strategies, we will discuss actionable insights to ensure your cloud infrastructure remains agile and cost-effective.

Cloud services have become essential for driving innovation and powering business operations. However, if not managed carefully, the convenience of cloud computing can quickly transform into a significant financial burden. 

As businesses adopt different cloud computing platforms to meet their changing requirements, the scale of their cloud infrastructure grows exponentially, resulting in a surge in expenses. Unanticipated, hefty bills start flooding their inboxes, catching them by surprise. 

Unfortunately, due to the absence of a centralized system for monitoring expenditures, many organizations remain unaware of the full extent of their cloud costs. 

Surprisingly, nearly half of all businesses (49%) face challenges when managing cloud expenses. This highlights the widespread difficulty in controlling costs within this constantly evolving environment. More concerning is that 33% of businesses exceed their cloud budget by 40%. This emphasizes the immediate need for proactive strategies to manage costs effectively. Adding to the problem, 78% of businesses realize the impact of their cloud spending only when it is too late.

This is why effective cost optimization becomes crucial in such a landscape to avoid exceeding budgets and ensure financial sustainability.

But before diving deep into cloud cost optimization best practices, we must understand the components of cloud cost and the reasons for increasing cloud cost.

Components That Make Cloud Costs

Determining the costs of cloud services requires providers to consider various crucial components meticulously. In particular, providers carefully assess networking, computing, and storage elements to establish a pricing structure for their customers.

• Networking Costs: Providers thoroughly evaluate the financial implications of maintaining the network infrastructure. This encompasses scrutinizing hardware, network setup, labor, and ongoing maintenance expenses.
• Storage Costs: Providers analyze the operational costs associated with managing storage hardware for clients, as well as the potential investment required to procure new hardware to meet the storage requirements of businesses. In a study by Virtana, titled "State of Hybrid Cloud Storage in 2023", out of 350 IT personnel, 94% agreed that their storage cost was increasing. Moreover, 54% said their storage cost increased faster than their overall cloud bill. This places a strong emphasis on the fact that storage is a significant component of your comprehensive cloud bill.
• Computing Costs: Determining computing expenses entails considering various aspects. Service providers evaluate the costs associated with CPUs, which are tailored to meet the distinct needs of individual client organizations. Furthermore, licensing fees dependent on the operating system utilized by the organization are considered. The provider also calculates the expenses incurred in procuring hardware based on the amount of virtual RAM in gigabytes the client company uses.

Understanding Reasons For Increasing Cloud Cost

There are various reasons for the increasing cloud cost, some of which are mentioned below.

• Unhealthy Instances: Unhealthy instances are instances within a system that abruptly malfunction and cease operations. Typically, these instances are automatically removed and replaced with new ones. 
  However, unhealthy instances may still receive traffic and requests during this transition until the platform's load balancer detects their unhealthy status. 
  If the cloud infrastructure terminates these instances without analyzing the traffic they received while unhealthy, valuable data might be lost.

• Not Using Savings Plans and Reservation Plans: Strategies like Saving Plans and Reserved Instances offer efficient approaches to reducing AWS expenses while ensuring resource capacity and performance.
  Not having savings or reservation plans may lead to a heavier reliance on on-demand instances, which have higher pricing than reserved instances or instances covered by savings plans.
  Opting for on-demand instances without any commitment or pre-purchase can result in inefficient allocation of resources. Provisioning more resources than required or utilizing instances inefficiently is possible, leading to wasted capacity and increased expenses.
  The lack of cost-saving measures such as savings or reservation plans may lead to cloud expenses exceeding the budgetary projections. This can result in unexpected budget overruns, negatively impacting your organization's financial health and operational planning.
  By purchasing Reserved Instances (RIs) in advance for one or three years, users can save up to 72% on on-demand instances. With RIs, users prepay for a fixed amount of computing power. Two types of RIs are available: convertible RIs and Standard RIs.

• Unused Instances: One of the significant benefits of pay-as-you-go cloud computing is its fast, simple, and flexible resource allocation. Users can quickly request additional resources with just a few clicks, which is advantageous for managing sudden increases in traffic and allowing businesses to launch new IT projects and services rapidly.
  However, because it is so easy to provision new virtual machines in the cloud, many DevOps teams overlook the instances and resources they have acquired. 
  Unused instances signify unutilized resources that your organization pays for but does not use. This leads to ineffective fund allocation and compromises the cost-effectiveness of your cloud infrastructure.
  Persistently paying for unused instances results in unnecessary expenses, which can accumulate rapidly over time. This can lead to inflated cloud bills and exert financial strain on your organization's budget, particularly if not monitored and addressed adequately.

• Wrong instance sizing: Opting for instances that exceed the required size or power leads to overprovisioning, resulting in unnecessary expenditure on unused resources. This practice eventually amplifies your cloud bill, draining funds needlessly.
  Additionally, overprovisioned instances commonly encounter underutilization, as they are not fully employed to their capacity. This inefficiency translates into paying for idle resources, amplifying costs without yielding any extra value.
  Moreover, improper instance sizing can cause ineffective resource distribution throughout your cloud environment. Specific workloads might operate on instances with excessive resources, while others may suffer from inadequate resources. This disparity can lead to substandard performance and increased expenses.

• Storage Resource Wastage: This goes unnoticed, but storage is one of the leading causes of escalated cloud bills. While the Virtana reports corroborate this, we also did an independent study to determine the impact of storage on cloud bills. We took over 100 clients using leading cloud service providers into consideration and discovered that:some text
  • Block Storage, such as AWS EBS, Azure Managed Disk, and GCP Persistent Disk, played a significant role in the overall expenditure of cloud services.
  • The utilization of block disks for primary volumes and databases hosted internally was remarkably low.
  • Organizations tended to overestimate their storage needs and provision excess resources.
  • Despite this overprovisioning, organizations experienced downtime at least once every quarter.

This is why there is a need for a cloud cost optimization strategy that focuses on cloud computing and factors in storage usage and wastage. Our study to understand storage-related cost also revealed the reasons organizations overlook storage optimization:

• Custom Tools Creation: Cloud Service Providers (CSPs) offer a limited range of features that require developing tailor-made tools to optimize storage. Consequently, this increases the effort and time invested in DevOps activities.
• Drawbacks of CSP Tools: Relying exclusively on tools provided by CSPs may result in ineffective and cumbersome procedures that require substantial manual intervention and resource allocation. It is not feasible to sustain workloads that are both labor-intensive and resource-consuming.
• Absence of Live Shrinkage: Major cloud service providers lack live shrinkage functionality for storage processes, requiring manual methods. This involves creating new volumes and snapshots, which can lead to downtime.

Furthermore, to guarantee a constant supply of resources in the cloud, organizations must enhance their buffer to a considerable extent. However, strengthening the buffer involves a series of actions.

• Manual Intervention: Improving buffer performance entails various tasks such as deployment, alerting, and monitoring. Each task requires different tools, leading to dedicated efforts and time from the DevOps team. Their primary objective is to ensure these tools' seamless setup and smooth operation.
• Inefficiency in Time: Certain activities, like reducing 1 TB of disk space or upgrading disks, require extended downtime mandated by certain cloud service providers. Specifically, reducing disk space requires at least 4 hours, while disk upgrades necessitate at least 3 hours. These limitations present significant challenges in maintaining uninterrupted operations, mainly when continuous service availability is vital.
• Latency Growth: The upgrade of disks leads to a rise in latency, directly impacting the responsiveness of networked applications and services. As a result, overall performance is hindered, negatively affecting the user experience.
• Expansion Setbacks: During the subsequent expansion phase, organizations experience considerable delays, lasting at least 6 hours. These interruptions significantly impede the application's ability to promptly adjust to changing demands, adversely affecting overall performance and responsiveness.

This is why the organization overprovisions the storage resources instead of optimizing them. However, overprovisioning signals resource and operational efficiency and escalates the cloud bill since you are paying for the resources that you are not using.

Failure to account for storage wastage in a cloud setting can lead to escalated expenses, ineffective allocation of resources, excessive provisioning, constraints on scalability, hurdles in achieving cost optimization, and the potential for exceeding budgets. To tackle these repercussions, it is crucial to consistently oversee and control storage usage, identify and rectify waste areas, and adopt strategies that enhance storage efficiency and diminish unnecessary expenditure.

• Lack of Cloud Visibility: Insufficient insight into cloud usage and performance data poses a significant obstacle in effectively managing resource allocation. This can lead to either underutilization or overprovisioning of resources, i.e., allocating more resources than necessary. Both situations result in inefficient utilization of resources, ultimately causing unnecessary escalation of cloud expenses.

Moreover, insufficient clarity hinders the identification of expensive usage trends or inefficiencies in resource utilization. It becomes arduous to undertake corrective measures for optimizing expenses and curtailing avoidable expenditures without understanding the specific services or instances contributing to increased costs.

Additionally, insufficient visibility creates complexities in monitoring and overseeing cloud expenses. Without real-time visibility into expenditure patterns, it becomes arduous to efficiently track costs, detect irregularities or sudden surges in spending, and promptly address excessive expenditures.

Significance Of Cloud Cost Optimization Best Practices

Implementing best practices for optimizing cloud costs is crucial for achieving cost reductions, enhancing resource efficiency, improving performance, enabling scalability and flexibility, managing budgets effectively, boosting return on investment (ROI), and gaining a competitive edge. Embracing these practices allows organizations to maximize the value of their cloud investments and effectively attain their desired business objectives. Let's delve deeper into each of these aspects.

• Cost Reduction: Implementing best practices for cost optimization enables organizations to minimize their expenditure on cloud services. This allows them to allocate resources more efficiently and effectively. By optimizing costs, organizations can achieve substantial savings, positively impacting their overall financial health and bottom line.
• Resource Efficiency: Cost optimization practices are vital in promoting resource efficiency by ensuring optimal usage of cloud resources. This involves rightsizing instances, using reserved instances or savings plans, optimizing storage utilization, and effectively utilizing spot instances. Maximizing resource efficiency allows organizations to extract the maximum value from their cloud investments while avoiding waste of resources.
• Improved Performance: Optimizing costs often goes hand in hand with enhancing performance. Organizations can enhance application performance and responsiveness by efficiently adjusting instance sizes and optimizing resource utilization. This approach ensures that resources are allocated appropriately to meet workload demands without overspending on unnecessary resources.
• Scalability and Flexibility: Implementing effective cost optimization practices empowers organizations to scale their cloud resources as per demand while minimizing expenses. This enables organizations to promptly and efficiently adapt to evolving business needs without incurring unnecessary costs. With optimized costs, organizations gain flexibility and agility in their cloud environments.
• Improved Budget Management: Cost optimization practices assist organizations in enhancing their cloud budget management through insights into spending patterns, identification of potential cost-saving opportunities, and facilitating proactive cost management. This empowers organizations to establish realistic budgets, effectively monitor expenditures, and prevent unexpected cost overruns. 
• Enhanced Return on Investment (ROI): Organizations can enhance the ROI of their cloud deployments by optimizing costs and maximizing resource efficiency. Cost optimization practices enable organizations to derive increased value from their cloud investments by ensuring efficient resource utilization in alignment with business objectives, thereby minimizing unnecessary expenses.

Cloud Cost Optimization Best Practices

Having gained a comprehensive understanding of cloud cost components, factors affecting it, and the growing importance of cloud cost optimization, let us now examine some of the best practices for cloud cost optimization.‍

1. Use Reserved Instance

Consider utilizing Reserved Instances (RIs) as they offer substantial cost reductions when compared to on-demand pricing. These instances are ideal for consistent usage, typically one to three years. Analyzing your usage patterns and identifying suitable instances for RIs is recommended to optimize your savings without making excessive commitments.

When you buy Reserved Instances (RIs) from a cloud provider, you can choose the instance type, region, or availability zone and commit to using the instance for either 1 or 3 years. In return, cloud providers usually grant discounts of up to 75%.

How Do You Use Reserved Instances For Cloud Cost Optimization?

• Review Usage Patterns: Evaluate past usage patterns to pinpoint consistently used instances or those with predictable usage. These are prime candidates for reserved instances.
• Identify Appropriate Instances: Identify which instance types and sizes are commonly used in your setup and would benefit from reservation. Pay attention to instances of continuous utilization or high usage hours.
• Choose the Correct Term and Type: Select the proper term length (one or three years) depending on your usage forecast and commitment level. Also, consider the various reserved instances available, such as Standard RIs, Convertible RIs, and Scheduled RIs, to choose the one that best aligns with your requirements.
• Optimize Instance Size Flexibility: Numerous cloud providers can adjust instance sizes with reserved instances, enabling you to apply discounted rates to cases of varying sizes in the same instance family. Seamlessly incorporate this functionality to enhance coverage across your instance fleet.‍

2. Use Savings Plan

Another cost-effective option in addition to RIs is to utilize Savings Plans. Unlike RIs, savings plans provide greater flexibility and cover a broader range of services, such as families. By committing to a consistent amount of usage measured in dollars per hour over a one—or three-year term, you can unlock potential savings on your overall usage. Consider incorporating Savings Plans into your cost optimization strategy to maximize cost efficiency.

How Do You Use Savings Plans For Cloud Cost Optimization?

• Assess Your Usage: Examine cloud usage to spot trends and project your future computing needs. Understanding how you use cloud services enables you to make informed decisions about the best Savings Plan for your business.
• Pick the Right Plan: There are various types of Savings Plans available from cloud providers, such as Compute Savings Plans and EC2 Instance Savings Plans. Compute Savings Plans are versatile, offering discounts on various instance types and sizes. At the same time, EC2 Instance Savings Plans provide more substantial discounts but are limited to specific instance types.
• Choose Term and Commitment: Determine whether a one—or three-year term best fits your Savings Plan. Longer terms usually offer higher discounts but require a more significant upfront commitment.
• Maximize Savings with Flexible Plans: Customize your Savings Plans by mixing and matching instance families, sizes, regions, and operating systems to maximize your savings potential. This level of flexibility allows you to adapt to changing workload requirements while taking advantage of discounted pricing.
• Stay on Top of Usage with Monitoring Tools: Stay proactive with monitoring tools that track actual usage against your committed usage covered by Savings Plans. Utilize cloud provider tools and third-party solutions to identify areas for Optimization and ensure you get the most out of your Savings Plans.

3. Utilize Spot Instances

Spot instances offer the opportunity to bid competitively for additional EC2 capacity, typically accessible at considerably reduced rates compared to on-demand instances. 

Leverage spot instances when dealing with fault-tolerant workloads, batch processing, or tasks that can be paused and resumed without substantial consequences.

Spot instances are particularly beneficial for handling batch jobs or tasks that can be terminated promptly. However, they are not recommended for executing critical and time-consuming operations.

How Do You Use Spot Instances?

• Select appropriate workloads: Not all workloads are suitable for spot instances. Fault-tolerant workloads are ideal candidates, as they can be easily distributed or restarted and do not require consistent availability. Everyday use cases include batch processing, data analysis, rendering, and testing environments.
• Incorporate fault-tolerance measures: Integrate fault-tolerance mechanisms into your applications to manage spot instance interruptions effectively. This could involve checkpointing work, saving state externally, or utilizing distributed computing frameworks capable of handling node failures.
• Utilize various instance types and regions: Distribute your spot instance requests among different instance types and availability zones to enhance your chances of securing capacity at a lower cost and decrease the risk of all instances being interrupted simultaneously.
• Combine with reserved and on-demand instances: Employ a mix of spot, reserved, and on-demand instances to balance cost, performance, and flexibility.

4. Consider Single Or Multi-Cloud Deployment

Assess the advantages and difficulties of single-cloud and multi-cloud deployments according to your organization's requirements. Consider factors such as cost, performance, flexibility, and vendor lock-in.

Multi-cloud deployments offer potential cost optimization possibilities by capitalizing on competitive pricing and evading vendor lock-in. Pair your deployment with a multi-cloud cost management tool and watch your infrastructure become cost-efficient.

5. Use the Right Storage Options

Amazon S3 is considered a core component of cloud storage solutions for its flexibility, easy integration with AWS and other services, and the ability to offer virtually unlimited storage. However, understanding the various storage tiers within AWS can be overwhelming, as each tier has its pricing model. Therefore, it is crucial to thoroughly research and make educated decisions when choosing the right tier to avoid overspending. 

You can read more about the different storage options in our blog, which compares storage options provided by leading cloud service providers.

6. Optimize Cloud Cost At Every Level Of The Software Development Lifecycle

Incorporating cloud cost optimization into the software development lifecycle (SDLC) ensures that cost considerations are considered at every step, from planning through deployment and operation. To successfully implement cost optimization throughout the SDLC, follow these steps:

 Planning Phase

• Budget justification: In the planning phase, justify the budget allocation for cloud resources by analyzing expected costs based on usage estimates and projected growth.
• Utilize cost data: Use cost data to guide decisions related to technical debt and prioritize features on the product roadmap. Understand the potential impact of technical choices on long-term costs and prioritize optimizations to reduce unexpected expenses.

Planning and Construction Phase

• Capturing data: Gather data on resource utilization, performance indicators, and scalability criteria throughout the application's design and construction process. This information will aid in making strategic architectural choices that streamline expenses while satisfying performance and scalability prerequisites.
•  Economical architectures: Conceive architectures emphasizing cost efficiency, like employing serverless computing, refining storage selections, and implementing auto-scaling to align resource consumption with demand.

Deployment and Operation Phase

• Identify unexpected expenditures: Monitor cloud spending regularly during deployment and operation to detect unforeseen costs promptly. Utilize monitoring tools and alerts to identify cost discrepancies and swiftly rectify them.
•  Optimize financial planning: Use the data collected from monitoring to adjust costs and budgets as necessary. This will help optimize spending and ensure resources are allocated effectively.

Monitoring Phase

• Cost reassessment: Review costs regularly by team, feature, and product to monitor operational expenditures accurately. Use this data to analyze cost trends, pinpoint areas for improvement, and measure ROI based on business objectives.
• Reporting: Produce reports comparing planned expenditures with actual spending, unit costs of goods sold, and ROI to offer stakeholders insight into the application's financial performance. Use these reports for informed decision-making and prioritization of future optimizations.

Organizations can effectively manage costs, prevent unexpected spending, and enhance resource utilization by incorporating cloud cost optimization practices throughout the SDLC. This approach enables organizations to maximize the value obtained from their cloud investments.‍

7. Keeping An Eye Out For Cost Anomalies

The AWS Cost Management console offers robust tools to efficiently manage and optimize cloud costs. To make the most of its features:

• Set budgets: Establish budgets for your AWS usage according to your expected spending levels. You can assign budgets at different levels, including overall spending, specific services, or customized usage dimensions.
• Receive alerts: Define budget alerts when spending nears or surpasses predefined thresholds. This proactive strategy helps you adhere to your budget plan and prevent unforeseen expenses.
• Forecast AWS costs: Estimate your AWS expenses using the Cost Explorer tool in the Cost Management console. By analyzing past usage and future trends, you can better prepare for upcoming expenditures and make informed financial decisions. Adjust your forecasts based on shifts in usage patterns, planned projects, or external factors that could influence costs.
• Optimize cloud costs: Use AWS's cost optimization suggestions to uncover opportunities to reduce expenses and enhance efficiency. These recommendations include optimizing instance sizes, using reserved instances, or exploring more cost-effective storage solutions.

Take action on these recommendations to decrease costs while maintaining or improving the performance of your cloud infrastructure.

8. Using Cost Anomaly Detection Feature

Utilize the Cost Anomaly Detection feature, which utilizes machine learning algorithms to continuously monitor your AWS expenses and usage in real-time.

 Receive automatic alerts for any irregularities in spending, such as sudden cost increases or unforeseen usage patterns, that could signal inefficiencies or potential problems.

 Configure notifications to promptly notify you when anomalies are identified, enabling you to investigate and resolve any issues promptly.

9. Addressing Anomalies

Anomalies can be addressed in one of the following ways

• Root cause analysis: Utilize the insights from the Cost Management console to investigate the underlying cause of any anomalies detected. Look for any changes in usage, deployments, or configurations that may have contributed to the anomaly.
• Take corrective actions: Implement necessary changes to address the root cause of anomalies and prevent similar occurrences in the future. This may involve adjusting configurations, optimizing resource usage, or following best practices for cost management.
• Continuous monitoring: Regularly monitor and review your AWS usage to identify and address anomalies promptly. This proactive approach will help you effectively manage and control your cloud costs.

10. Limit Data Transfer Fees

Transferring data to and from a public cloud can incur significant costs due to data egress fees charged by cloud vendors, especially when moving data between regions. To minimize these expenses and optimize cloud costs, consider the following strategies:

• Reducing data egress costs in public cloud environments: When transferring data to and from a public cloud, it is essential to be mindful of potential costs associated with data egress fees imposed by cloud providers, especially when relocating data across different regions. To optimize cloud expenses and mitigate these charges, consider implementing the following strategies:
• Assess vendor transfer fees: Carefully examine the transfer fees imposed by your cloud provider to understand the financial implications of data transfers within and between regions. This insight can inform your decision-making process as you develop and refine your cloud architecture.
• Optimize cloud architecture: Reconfigure your cloud architecture to minimize redundant data transfers. For example, evaluate the feasibility of shifting on-premises applications that frequently access cloud data directly into the cloud environment. By reducing the necessity for frequent data movements, you can alleviate egress fees and enhance the efficiency of data retrieval.

Through careful evaluation of vendor transfer fees, strategic cloud architecture optimization, and the selection of cost-effective transfer methods, one can effectively reduce data egress costs and optimize overall cloud expenditure. This proactive strategy guarantees efficient and economical data transfers and significant financial savings.‍

11. Assessing Data Transfer Methods

You can examine the data transfer method in the following ways:

• Inspect expenses: Examine the expenses linked with different data transfer methods to facilitate secure and efficient data transfer between private data centers and the cloud.
• Cost analysis: Analyze the costs of employing specialized network connection services such as AWS Direct Connect, Google Cloud Interconnect, or Azure ExpressRoute compared to physical transfer devices like AWS Snowball or Azure Data Box.
• Choosing the right transfer methods: Select the most cost-efficient transfer method by considering data volume, transfer frequency, and the geographical proximity of data centers.

12. Automating Monitoring Of Idle/Unused And Overprovisioned Resources:

You will find different cloud cost management tools, with some specifically focused on monitoring. You might also think of manually discovering idle/unused or overprovisioned resources. However, we would advise against that. 

​​DevOps personnel's efforts or costly deployment expenses can hinder reliance on manual discovery and monitoring tools. The situation can quickly become too much to handle as complexity increases within storage environments.

This is where Lucidity leverages cloud cost automation.

The Lucidity Storage Audit provides a comprehensive solution by automating the entire process with a user-friendly, pre-configured executable tool. Analyzing disk health and utilization seamlessly enables users to optimize spending and prevent downtime efficiently without requiring manual intervention.

Lucidity Storage Audit provides valuable insights across various domains with just a click:

• Comprehensive analysis of disk expenditure: Easily track and compare current disk spending to projected optimized billing, uncovering potential savings of up to 70% on storage costs.
• Optimal disk space utilization: Efficiently identify and eliminate unused or overprovisioned disk space to ensure optimal resource allocation and reduce unnecessary waste.
• Proactive avoidance of disk downtime: Stay proactive in mitigating potential risks of disk downtime to safeguard against financial setbacks and uphold the organization's reputation.

The Lucidity Storage Audit tool offers advanced features for monitoring storage usage data, providing the following benefits:

• Automated auditing: Say goodbye to manual efforts and complex monitoring tools. Lucidity Storage Audit streamlines the auditing process with an easy-to-use, pre-configured platform, reducing unnecessary tasks and improving operational efficiency.
• Comprehensive insights: Gain a deep understanding of disk health and usage effortlessly. Receive valuable insights to optimize spending and prevent downtime proactively, ensuring optimal performance across your storage environment.
• Efficient analysis: Make informed decisions on resource allocation and efficiency improvements. With Lucidity Audit, storage usage percentages, and disk sizes can be analyzed to drive efficiency and maximize resource utilization.
• Integrity preservation: Protect the integrity of your cloud environment and assets with ease. The Lucidity Storage Audit performs audits seamlessly, ensuring uninterrupted operations without causing disruptions. Maintain system efficiency while upholding top-notch security and reliability standards.

13. Auto-Scaling Storage Resources To Prevent Overprovisioning

The next step in storage cost optimization to ensure holistic cloud cost optimization is auto-scaling the storage resource to eliminate any possibility of underprovisioning or overprovisioning. This is achieved through automating the storage scaling process.

So far, we know how block storage is one of the major contributors to the overall cloud bill and why organizations prefer overprovisioning instead of optimizing the storage resources. Targeting both these issues, Lucidity has designed the industry's first autonomous storage orchestration solution that automates shrinkage and expansion of storage resources without downtime or performance degradation.

The Lucidity Block Storage Auto-Scaler effectively handles resizing storage resources to adapt to changing demands quickly. It sits atop block storage and cloud service providers, boasting the following key features:

• Seamless integration: Easily integrate Lucidity Block Storage Auto-Scaler into your storage management system in just three clicks. This simplifies your storage handling process significantly.
• Optimized storage: Instantly enhance your storage capacity and achieve 70-80% utilization rates, lowering costs and making your storage management more cost-effective.
• Swift responsiveness: The Block Storage Auto-Scaler's expansion capabilities allow you to quickly add more storage capacity and effortlessly respond to sudden increases in traffic or workload.
• Reduced performance impact: Lucidity is expertly designed to minimize its impact on your system's resources. The highly optimized agent consumes less than 2% of CPU and RAM during onboarding, guaranteeing that your workload remains unaffected. This exceptional feature allows you to focus on your tasks without any disruptions.

The Lucidity Block-Storage Auto-Scaler offers unmatched benefits by incorporating advanced features:

• Automated shrinkage and expansion: The Lucidity Block Storage Auto-Scaler streamlines disk scaling, swiftly adjusting in 90 seconds. Unlike traditional volumes limited to 8GB per minute, our solution overcomes these limitations with a robust buffer to handle sudden data surges while adhering to throughput limits.
• Storage cost savings: Our dynamic resource allocation feature helps you avoid excessive expenses, potentially saving up to 70% on storage costs. Use our ROI Calculator to input details about your Azure spending, disk usage, and growth rate for a customized assessment and potential savings.

• Continuous operation: Typical provisioning methods can involve complex processes that result in downtime. Lucidity Block Storage Auto-Scaler mitigates this by quickly adjusting to fluctuating storage needs, guaranteeing uninterrupted operation.
• Customized strategies: Lucidity presents a user-friendly "Create Policy" function, allowing users to tailor policies to suit particular scenarios and performance requirements. With the Block Storage Auto-Scaler, storage capacities adjust automatically based on predefined policies, maximizing efficiency.

Incorporating effective cloud cost optimization practices involves more than just reducing expenses. It entails aligning your cloud usage with your business objectives and maximizing the value of your investments. Utilizing the methods above while fostering a cost-conscious culture within your organization will help maintain a cost-effective and agile cloud infrastructure. Embracing the practices mentioned above will optimize cloud spending and enable your business to innovate and scale efficiently in the current digital landscape.

If the escalating storage wastage is forcing you to pay a hefty cloud bill, then it is time to automate the monitoring and scaling of storage resources with Lucidity. Book a demo and learn how we leverage automation for a cost-optimized cloud infrastructure.