Towards a better spend control on AWS

Raghuveer Varahagiri | AWS is used by the biggest enterprises in the world, and the smallest startups and teams -- and even the lone developer or student who is trying to learn. How best we are able to enable and empower those at the lower end of the spectrum has a deep and meaningful impact on the health of the broader ecosystem at the biggest scale. I argue for continued improvement of choice and protection for the individual AWS customer.

For the longest time AWS has a one-size-fits-all approach when it comes to offering a way to signup – there was a free tier and then you are billed for everything that exceeds the free-tier limits. Of course there are Enterprise Pricing Agreements negotiated in private and volume discounts etc that further sweeten the deal for the big spenders but we’ll set it aside as it is not central to the argument of this post. I am choosing to focus bottom-up in this post – namely, look at the typical usage and patterns and needs of the smallest of AWS customers and project it upwards into how it drives the utilization and market position of AWS at the largest scales.

I hope you will agree that for any real solution architecture or enterprise architetcure that takes shape and becomes a reality, the seeds of it start much earlier in time – typically years earlier, when the people involved in those strategic decisions and execution were beginners. Travel back in time with me a few years or even a decade if you will. The young student or early-career technical engineer who is aspiring to make a mark in the world of technology and is looking at AWS as the platform to build on. They bring a lot of passion, commitment, energy and many other positive things – but what they lack is deep pockets. And like any beginner they learn through hands-on experimentation – which involves trial and error. But fif the “error” part of “trial and error” can be a life changing amount that can ruin you financially or set you back significantly, how adventerous and innovative can you will yourself to be? This was the tough challenge that faced many in the world of tech.

There are countless stories of people who have been shocked by an unexpectectly high AWS bill. No doubt they did some naive mistake – forgot to shutdown an EC2 instance, were careless with the account keys, and he like. There is no dearth of advice on how to avoid this – what they SHOULD HAVE done, and how they can prevent it from happening again. There are also enough tales of generosity and sensible waivers offered by AWS support. But is this all we can hope for – or can we imagine a better alternative? Can we also spare some thought to what AWS can do to PREVENT this scenario in the firts place?

I would first like to also acknowledge that AWS has recently revamped their free-tier offering. There is now a separate “free plan” and a conscious decision on part of the subscriber to switch to a “paid plan” before any charges will be billed. This is a undoubtedly a great step in the right direction.