Optimizing RDS and non-EC2 RIs with Eco

Bobby Gaffin

Product Marketing Manager

September 12, 2022
2 min read
Amazon Web Services Cloud Cost Management Cost Reduction Eco Reserved Instances

Eco’s ability to leverage Amazon’s Reserved Instance Marketplace when managing and optimizing customers’ EC2 (Elastic Compute Cloud) commitments is well known. Through advanced algorithms and many years of experience, we’re able to deliver the flexibility of on-demand with the savings of reserved instances.

However, most AWS customers have diverse environments that include non-EC2 RIs, such as RDS (Relational Database Service), Redshift, ElastiCache, ECS (Elastic Container Service), and OpenSearch, the successor to Elastisearch. These services provide a variety of functions including database storage, caching, and search, allowing businesses to increase flexibility in configuring their development environments.

How Eco handles non-EC2 instances

Non-EC2 reserved instances don’t have access to the AWS Reserved Instance Marketplace and are non-transferable. Even with this longer-term RI lock-in, Eco still generates considerable savings while taking a much more conservative approach to purchasing reserved commitments. By closely monitoring your environment and reviewing your changes in demand, Eco can reduce waste from over-committing on RIs and prevent costly under-commitments that result in excess on-demand usage. As an AWS Partner, Spot by NetApp has worked closely with Amazon and continuously honed its RI optimization capabilities over the past six years.

RDS instance pricing

Out of all of the types of non-EC2 instances on AWS, RDS is the most commonly used. RDS is a managed service that allows you to build, run, and maintain database servers on AWS. While it is possible to run databases on EC2, RDS is usually more cost-effective and easier to set up. The actual pricing of your RDS bill is affected by a variety of factors; these are the five most important:

  • Region: a physical location around the world with a cluster of data centers. Ex. the us-west-2 region is located in Oregon.
  • Database Instance Class: details the configuration of your RDS instance. Ex. db.m5.large consists of two virtual CPUs and 8 GiBs of memory.
  • Database Engine: the underlying software of your database. Ex. Oracle or MySQL.
  • License Type: how you license your database engine. Ex. license included by AWS, bring your own license, or general public license.
  • Deployment Option: determines how your database is deployed on AWS. Ex. Multi-AZ.

Getting started with RDS on AWS

AWS RDS setup without Eco:

  1. Collect data on your database usage and expected demand.
  2. Analyze the data and create a usage estimate.
  3. Buy RIs according to the estimate.
  4. Review usage regularly and make changes as needed.

AWS RDS setup with Eco:

  1. Connect your AWS account to Eco.
  2. Meet with the Eco Team to discuss current usage and expected demand.
  3. Allow Eco’s adaptive learning model to execute an optimal RI strategy.
  4. Notify the Eco Team of any changes to expected demand.
Graphs showing Eco managing commitment levels
Eco eliminates unnecessary waste from an RI over-commitment and minimizes costly on-demand usage, saving you time and money.

Why chose Eco

Eco’s tooling acts quickly based on usage trends in real-time by using advanced algorithms and predictive machine learning. Offering experienced FinOps teams their time back and giving novice teams confidence knowing that their environments are running efficiently. Ready to see how Eco can save time while saving on RDS commitments? Schedule a demo with a Solutions Architect today!