COST 8: How do you plan for data transfer charges?

Ensure that you plan and monitor data transfer charges so that you can make architectural decisions to minimize costs. A small yet effective architectural change can drastically reduce your operational costs over time.

Resources

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Best Practices:

• Perform data transfer modeling: Gather organization requirements and perform data transfer modeling of the workload and each of its components. This identifies the lowest cost point for its current data transfer requirements.

• Select components to optimize data transfer cost: All components are selected, and architecture is designed to reduce data transfer costs. This includes using components such as WAN optimization and Multi-AZ configurations

• Implement services to reduce data transfer costs: Implement services to reduce data transfer: for example, using a CDN such as Amazon CloudFront to deliver content to end users, caching layers using Amazon ElastiCache, or using AWS Direct Connect instead of VPN for connectivity to AWS.

Improvement Plan

Perform data transfer modeling

Calculate data transfer costs : Use the AWS pricing pages and calculate the data transfer costs for the workload. Also calculate the data transfer costs at different usage levels, for both increases and reductions in workload usage. Where there are multiple options for the workload architecture cost each option for comparison.
Amazon EC2 Pricing
Amazon VPC pricing

Link costs to outcomes : For each data transfer cost incurred, specify the outcome that it achieves for the workload. If it is transfer between components it may be for decoupling, if it is between availability zones it may be for redundancy.

Select components to optimize data transfer cost

Select components for data transfer : Using the data transfer modelling, focus on where the largest data transfer costs are or where they would be if the workload usage changes. Look for alternative architectures or additional components that remove or reduce the need for data transfer, or lower its cost.

Implement services to reduce data transfer costs

Implement services : Using the data transfer modelling, look at where the largest costs and highest volume flows are. Review the AWS services and assess whether there is a service that reduces or removes the transfer, specifically networking and content delivery. Also look for caching services where there is repeated access to data, or large amounts of data.
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AWS Direct Connect
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