AWS Cost Optimization Best Practices

Use this checklist to lower AWS costs while maintaining performance and reliability. FCAI provides guardrails, recommendations, and automation for each area.

1) Right-size compute

• Identify underutilized EC2, EKS nodes, and RDS instances.
• Prefer Graviton where supported; validate CPU arch compatibility.
• Use autoscaling with sane min/max and scale policies.

2) Use Savings Plans/RIs

• Start with Compute Savings Plans; layer Standard RIs for stable fleets.
• Diversify terms and payment options; monitor utilization.

3) Optimize storage

• Apply S3 lifecycle policies (IA, Glacier) and Intelligent‑Tiering.
• Enable EBS gp3 migration and clean unattached volumes/snapshots.
• Right‑size RDS storage and IOPS; enable automated backups.

4) Network & data transfer

• Minimize cross‑AZ and inter‑region transfers; use VPC endpoints.
• Prefer CloudFront for egress; cache aggressively.

5) Container/serverless efficiency

• Tune CPU/memory requests/limits; use bin‑packing strategies.
• For Lambda, choose memory for best ms/$; keep packages slim.

6) Observability & governance

• Tag consistently (owner, env, app, cost‑center).
• Set Budgets and anomaly detection; review weekly.
• Use FCAI dashboards and alerts for drift and spikes.

7) Clean up

• Delete idle load balancers, elastic IPs, test stacks, stale snapshots.
• Decommission legacy regions and unused services.

FCAI helps

• Automated findings, safe‑apply actions, and commitment planning.
• Guardrails to avoid performance regressions while reducing spend.

Need help applying these? Contact FCAI Support.