How to Manage the Cost of Iaas Environments by Reducing Data Retrieval Fees
Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) is disrupting how businesses large and small approach their hardware IT needs. Rather than purchasing servers and maintaining networks on-site, many are utilizing cloud options. Businesses can get more computing power at a lower cost and without the hassle of maintenance, making it an easy decision to partner with an IaaS provider.
Your business has likely already adopted IaaS at some level, and your use of cloud-based infrastructure will probably only increase in the future. Gartner has predicted that the industry would reach $400 billion in 2020, and that was before the Covid-19 pandemic increased remote working and cloud usage. Of course, the benefits of IaaS (and corresponding corporate use) of remote infrastructure will continue long after the pandemic subsides.
With such a significant disruption, businesses that use IaaS must rethink how to manage their IT infrastructure budget. Without careful consideration and ongoing monitoring, it’s easy for cloud-based services like Amazon Web Services (AWS) or Microsoft Azure to unnecessarily consume a large portion of your business’ IT budget through egress fees alone. Here are some aspects of data retrieval that are important to pay attention to make sure costs don’t spiral.
Mitigate Data Egress Fees to Reduce IaaS Costs
Data egress fees are a common cloud service charge that sometimes catches businesses unaware. These charges are manageable and can be kept within budget, but it’s important to be aware that they’ll be assessed and prepare for them.
Data egress fees are simply charges for downloading data from the cloud. They’re assessed according to how much data is transferred into and out of the cloud, and each transaction of data counts toward a business’ data transfer usage.
These fees can creep up on businesses for a couple of reasons.
- Some businesses overlook them when signing up for cloud storage solutions. Businesses often focus on storage fees and pay less attention to data transfer and access fees.
- Many cloud storage providers allow a small amount of data to be transferred without fee. Amazon Web Service, for example, allows businesses to access one gigabyte of data without any egress fees. Small businesses that have minimal cloud usage might not reach that mark at first, only seeing egress fees after their cloud usage has increased over the course of a few months. The majority of businesses however have much more data than this and need to be aware of the associated costs.
With awareness of these fees, businesses can take a few simple steps to manage access and egress fees. These basic steps will keep the fees within budget:
Create a Strategy for Storage within IaaS Environments
If you are going to maintain high-traffic data within an IaaS Environment, you may want to consider finding a smaller provider that has less access and egress fees. Alternatively, considering storing that data onsite and use your IaaS for archiving or data that is accessed less frequently.
Profile Applications for Cloud Readiness
Limit the number of applications that are multi-tiered and within a hybrid state. Situations such as having parts of the application exist on-prem, while other pieces exist within the cloud, can cause additional egress fees. In addition, having the sources of a data warehouse live within the cloud, while the extract engine is on-prem doing a nightly load is not the best case scenario for serving an organization. Consider moving the application entirely to the cloud or entirely on-prem to drive down egress charges.
Review Archiving Policies
Archived objects increase data access, and most archived objects see very little (if any) usage after 30 days. Review your company’s archiving policy to see whether everything that’s archived truly has to be. If you can reduce the number of archived objects, you’ll lower both storage and access fees.
Check Archival Access
As part of your archival policy review, check who has access to your business’ archived objects. The more people who have access, the more likely those objects are to be accessed—and the more data egress fees incurred. Only those who actually need to archive should have access to them, and those people ought to be educated on how data egress fees work. Also review the types of archiving storage which may be available within the cloud. Putting content into the appropriate type, whether infrequent access vs frequent access, will have different costs associated with them.
Set Up Automated Tools
To monitor data egress on an ongoing basis, set up automated cost governance and cost usage tools. Basic programs can alert you and others to unusual data usage. This will ensure you’re never surprised by data access or egress fees.
Proactively Manage Your Business’ IaaS Costs
If your business is currently using or will soon use infrastructure services, take a protective approach to managing IaaS costs. Rethink your approach and manage your data wisely to maintain costs and even see substantial savings that will improve the bottom line. IaaS has enormous potential when it’s managed properly.
For help with IaaS, speak with an expert at ComportSecure. A leading provider of private cloud solutions, Comport is able to provide cost-effective cloud solutions that offer the functionality your business needs at a price that’s easy on the budget with limited access and egress fees.
