Day 23: Exploring AWS: Billing & Cost

AWS Free Services

• EC2 Web Server - 750 hours per month of t2.micro instance for 1 year.

• RDS Database - 750 hours per month of t2.db.micro instance (MySQL or Postgres) for 1 year.

• ELB Load Balancer - 750 hours per month for 1 year.

• Amazon CloudFront - 50 GB data transfer out total for 1 year.

• Amazon Connect - 90 minutes of call time per month for 1 year.

• Amazon ElastiCache - 750 hours per month of cache.t3.micro instance for 1 year.

• Amazon Elasticsearch Service - 750 hours per month for 1 year.

• PinPoint Campaign/Marketing Emails - 5,000 targeted users per month for 1 year.

• SES Emails - 62,000 emails sent per month forever.

• AWS CodePipeline - 1 pipeline free.

• AWS CodeBuild - 100 build minutes per month forever.

• AWS Lambda - 1 million requests and 3.2 million seconds of compute time per month.

AWS Support Plan

Technical Account Manager (TAM)

1. Solution Building - Offer technical guidance and advocate for customer needs.

2. Operational Health - Ensure environments are healthy, cost-efficient, and less complex.

3. Customer Relationship - Develop trust by understanding business and technical challenges.

4. Technical Discussions - Drive discussions on incidents, trade-offs, and risk management.

5. Proactive Value - Identify opportunities for customers to gain additional AWS value.

AWS Marketplace

1. Curated Catalogue - Browse thousands of software listings from independent vendors.

2. Flexible Pricing - Products may be free or have associated charges added to your AWS bill.

3. Sales Channel - Sell solutions to other AWS customers.

4. Product Formats - Includes AMIs, CloudFormation templates, SaaS offerings, and Web ACLs.

5. Consulting Partners - Partner with AWS to provide software solutions.

Consolidated Billing

1. Single Bill - Pay for multiple AWS accounts with one bill.

2. Master Account - Designate one account to manage all billing.

3. No Additional Cost - Consolidated Billing is free.

4. Volume Discounts - Share usage to benefit from volume pricing discounts.

5. Cost Explorer - Visualize usage and billing for consolidated accounts.

AWS Trusted Advisor

1. Cost Optimization - Recommendations for saving money.

2. Performance - Suggestions for improving system performance.

3. Security - Advice on enhancing security measures.

4. Fault Tolerance - Tips for preventing data loss and downtime.

5. Service Limits - Monitor and manage service limits.

Service Level Agreement (SLA)

1. Formal Commitment - Expected level of service between provider and customer.

2. Service Level Indicator (SLI) - Metrics like uptime or performance.

3. Service Level Objective (SLO) - Specific performance targets (e.g., 99.99% availability).

4. DynamoDB SLA - Monthly uptime percentage commitments for DynamoDB.

5. SLA Credits - Compensation for unmet service levels.

Service Health Dashboard

1. General Status - Shows the status of AWS services.

2. Personal Health Dashboard - Alerts and guidance on events affecting your environment.

3. Active Events - Manage and plan for active AWS events.

4. Proactive Notifications - Receive alerts for scheduled activities.

5. Issue Resolution - Guidance to diagnose and resolve issues.

AWS Abuse

1. Spam - Reporting unwanted emails or spam.

2. Port Scanning - Report attempts to discover unsecured ports.

3. DoS Attacks - Report flooding attempts to overwhelm resources.

4. Intrusion Attempts - Report login attempts on your resources.

5. Malware Distribution - Report distribution of harmful software.

AWS Credits

1. Promotional Credits - Equivalent to USD dollars for AWS services.

2. Earn Credits - Through programs like AWS Activate or Hackathons.

3. Expiry Date - Credits typically have an expiration.

4. Usage Restrictions - Cannot be used for some services like Route53 domains.

5. Rewards and Events - Unique opportunities for credits, like speaking engagements.

AWS Partner Network (APN)

1. Global Partner Program - Opportunities for business and exclusive training.

2. Consulting Partner - Help companies utilize AWS.

3. Technology Partner - Build technology on AWS.

4. Tiered Membership - Select, Advanced, or Premier tiers with different requirements.

5. Certification and Exposure - APN-exclusive certifications and marketing opportunities.

AWS Budgets

1. Alerts for Budget Limits - Set alerts for exceeding or approaching budgets.

2. Cost, Usage, or Reservation Budgets - Track various types of budgets.

3. Customizable Dates - Manage budgets with specific start and end dates.

4. Daily Reports - Create and receive daily, weekly, or monthly budget reports.

5. API Integration - Manage budgets via the AWS Budgets dashboard or API.

AWS Cost and Usage Reports (CUR)

1. Detailed Reports - Generate spreadsheets with detailed cost data.

2. Granularity Options - Choose hourly, daily, or monthly data.

3. Cost Allocation Tags - Attach metadata to resources for detailed analysis.

4. S3 Storage - Store reports in S3, query with Athena, visualize with QuickSight.

5. Data Analysis - Use CUR data for in-depth cost analysis.

AWS Pricing API

1. Query API - Access pricing information programmatically (JSON).

2. Batch API - Access pricing data in HTML format.

3. Price Notifications - Subscribe to SNS for price change alerts.

4. Periodic Changes - AWS prices change periodically.

5. Latest Price Offerings - Get updates on new instance types or services.