Amazon Elastic Block Storage (EBS) is an efficient and durable block storage service. It is especially great for rapidly changing data on Amazon Web Services (AWS). Besides, Amazon EBS GP volumes promise a balance between performance and cost savings. In this guide, we see if that is the case. We’ll also tell if switching from your current EBS volume type is worth the while.

Organizations face significant challenges in increasing the efficiency of their growing cloud spending, even as the flexibility and variety of available cloud services offer many opportunities for optimization. Cloud environments are complex and dynamic due to the breadth of services and the drive to adopt new technologies, such as Arm-based processors and GPUs that enable AI capabilities.

Organizations moving to the cloud often prioritize speed and performance, overlooking the importance of AWS sizing. At first, Amazon’s pay-as-you-go pricing seems manageable, but as companies grow and add more to the cloud, they see the downside of ignoring sizing. Overprovisioned instances lead to spending on resources that aren’t used. This guide focuses on AWS sizing, its benefits, and why it matters. It provides practical tips and best practices to help optimize costs effectively.

A common misconception around cloud computing is that it’s automatically cheaper than running on-premises infrastructure. Unfortunately, when businesses switch to (or consider switching to) the cloud, their cloud savings may not be immediately evident. In fact, some businesses accrue more monthly costs with the on-demand cloud model than they would with on-premise systems. This begs the question: Is cloud computing really cost-effective?

Our perception of the cloud is underpinned by three terms: scalable, flexible, and efficient. These adjectives, however, are only the capabilities of the cloud—not the benefits. Turning the cloud’s capabilities into benefits involves understanding the nature of the cloud and optimizing how you use it based on that. From choosing your cloud vendor to rewriting your code for the cloud, our cloud cost efficiency checklist spans a wide spectrum of planning and actions.

As businesses increasingly migrate to cloud-based solutions to enhance their operational flexibility, the challenge of managing cloud expenses has become more pronounced. This development has highlighted the crucial role of finance teams, who are now integral in overseeing these complex cost structures.

As Azure grows more complex, the need for Azure FinOps tools that simplify financial management increases. In this guide, we’ll explore the best Azure FinOps tools. These tools can turn your cloud spending into a strategic asset and help you tackle the common challenge of rising cloud costs.

In this blog series we’ll be examining the Five Myths of Apache Spark Optimization. (Stay tuned for the entire series!) The first myth examines a common assumption of many Spark users: Observing and monitoring your Spark environment means you’ll be able to find the wasteful apps and tune them.