Cost optimization

How it is used

A regular topic for DevOps teams and finance. Common actions are rightsizing (making instances smaller), deleting idle resources, tagging costs by team and buying reserved capacity. The practice is often called FinOps.

Example sentences

1. Our cost optimization work this quarter saved about 20 percent, mostly by deleting idle test servers.

2. Cost optimization starts with tagging, because you can't fix costs you can't see.

Common collocations

• cloud cost optimization
• cost optimization review
• rightsizing
• reduce cloud spend

Related terms

• pay-as-you-goDescribes a pricing model in which you pay only for the resources you actually use, for example by the second, hour or gigabyte, with no long-term contract.
• reserved instanceCloud capacity you commit to use for one or three years in exchange for a large discount compared with normal on-demand prices.
• spot instanceSpare cloud capacity sold at a much lower price, which the provider can take back at short notice when it needs the capacity again.
• autoscalingAutomatically adding servers or containers when demand rises and removing them when it falls, based on rules such as CPU use or number of requests.
• egressData leaving a network, for example from a cloud provider to the internet or to another region. Cloud providers usually charge for egress but not for incoming data.

This word in other fields

The same English word can have a different meaning in another field:

• cost optimization · Software Engineering