Amazon WorkSpaces Cost Optimizer keeps your remote-work costs rightsized for the team actually logging in
Businesses can measure performance and value directly using the Amazon WorkSpaces solution suite. WorkSpaces includes features that allow businesses to customize functionality to scale costs for increased efficiency.
With so many companies allowing employees to work from home, WorkSpaces costs have ballooned for many. But Amazon has a tool, Cost Optimizer, to help you get the most bang for your buck. Here’s what Cost Optimizer is and how to use it to bring down your WorkSpaces expenses.
This article shows you how to use the Cost Optimizer feature in WorkSpaces to monitor and scale usage to reduce costs and waste.
What is Cost Optimizer?
Cost Optimizer is a free, built-in feature of the WorkSpaces DaaS (Desktop-as-a-service) solution. Cost Optimizer allows users to reduce their overall costs by analyzing usage data.
Using dry run mode allows Cost Optimizer to track usage data across the business. Daily and monthly reports are generated to allow for in-depth analysis. When Cost Optimizer finds that you’ll save money by switching to monthly or hourly billing, it automatically switches to the most cost-effective option.
How does Cost Optimizer work? It is a pre-made CloudFormation stack from AWS that creates a lambda function to review the usage of each workspace associated with the account. The function runs every 24 hours and changes the billing structure based on the monthly usage of the account’s combined workstations.
Benefits of using WorkSpaces’ Cost Optimizer
One benefit of using Cost Optimizer is the automatic billing cycle conversion. Once you’re satisfied the system works as expected, Cost Optimizer can be set to automatically update and switch from monthly to hourly billing based on your business usage data for the month. Cost Optimizer picks the plan that boosts cost savings without the need for constant oversight or manual intervention.
Another Cost Optimizer benefit is persistent usage monitoring. Cost Optimizer automatically analyzes usage data continuously. There’s no downtime for tracking or manually analyzing reports. The business usage data gets tracked in real-time and accurately.
One feature of Cost Optimizer that provides a hidden benefit is the dry run mode. Temporarily turning on the dry run mode for 30, 60, or 90 days allows a business to track the usage and performance of their workspaces. Once the results are analyzed and the system tuned to meet business-specific needs, then the dry run mode can be turned off in place of automatic monitoring and billing type updating. Dry run mode provides a trusted, convenient method to ensure WorkSpaces works as expected.
Other Cost Optimizer benefits include:
- Secured one-click deployment
- Daily and monthly usage report documentation
- Consistent and reliable performance
- Continuous ability to customize settings and features
Using Cost Optimizer to reduce WorkSpaces costs
Cost Optimizer provides tools to manage WorkSpaces costs. Both the dry run feature and the automatic mode allow businesses to customize their solution and analyze the cost results based on accurate usage data statistics.
Once set to run automatically, Cost Optimizer provides continuous monitoring of data usage to ensure the billing used provides the best benefit to the business. There’s no need to constantly review reports or manually intervene. Cost Optimizer saves money automatically while still providing easy access to manual reports and analytics data.
Cost Optimizer reduces WorkSpaces costs by:
- Monitoring usage data continuously
- Switching billing types to the most advantageous as needed
- Providing ongoing analytics and data reporting
- Reliable and consistent performance
- One-click deployment reduces the cost impact of manual IT management
Amazon WorkSpaces Cost Optimizer scales to business
WorkSpaces provides a DaaS system solution that allows businesses to realize cost savings with remote working. The built-in, automatic cost-reducing machine within WorkSpaces is Cost Optimizer. Cost Optimizer saves businesses money by continuously monitoring usage data across the WorkSpaces system and automatically adjusting the billing cycle.
By automatically adjusting the billing cycle, the business saves on usage costs because it only pays for what’s used. The built-in cost flexibility can be manually analyzed by reviewing daily and monthly usage reports. Additionally, using dry run mode allows businesses to manually measure and track usage data for cost advantages. Cost Optimizer provides automatic cost savings 24 hours a day while still providing customizable options.
CloudHesive provides assistance and deep expertise using Amazon Web Services cloud. As an Amazon Managed Services partner and Amazon Premier Partner, CloudHesive helps businesses take advantage of all the features AWS offers. See what other customers have to say in several case studies available from CloudHesive.
