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name: Cost Optimization description: This skill should be used when the user asks to "reduce cloud costs", "optimize spending", "FinOps", "cost analysis", "right-sizing", "reserved instances", "spot instances", "cloud budget", "cost allocation", "resource optimization", or needs help with cloud cost management and optimization strategies. version: 1.0.0

Cost Optimization

Comprehensive guidance for cloud cost management, FinOps practices, and resource optimization.

FinOps Framework

Core Principles

1. Visibility - Know what you're spending
2. Allocation - Attribute costs to owners
3. Optimization - Reduce waste, improve efficiency
4. Governance - Set policies and budgets

Cost Categories

Category	Examples	Optimization Strategy
Compute	EC2, VMs	Right-sizing, Reserved
Storage	S3, Disk	Tiering, Lifecycle
Network	Data transfer	CDN, Compression
Database	RDS, BigQuery	Reserved, Query optimization

AWS Cost Optimization

Cost Explorer Analysis

# Get monthly costs by service
aws ce get-cost-and-usage \
  --time-period Start=2024-01-01,End=2024-02-01 \
  --granularity MONTHLY \
  --metrics "UnblendedCost" \
  --group-by Type=DIMENSION,Key=SERVICE

# Get costs with tags
aws ce get-cost-and-usage \
  --time-period Start=2024-01-01,End=2024-02-01 \
  --granularity DAILY \
  --metrics "UnblendedCost" \
  --filter '{"Tags":{"Key":"Environment","Values":["production"]}}'

Right-Sizing with Compute Optimizer

# Get EC2 recommendations
aws compute-optimizer get-ec2-instance-recommendations \
  --instance-arns arn:aws:ec2:us-east-1:123456789:instance/i-12345

# Export recommendations
aws compute-optimizer export-ec2-instance-recommendations \
  --s3-destination-config bucket=my-bucket,keyPrefix=optimizer

Savings Plans & Reserved Instances

Type	Commitment	Discount	Flexibility
On-Demand	None	0%	Full
Savings Plans	1-3 years	30-72%	High
Reserved Instances	1-3 years	40-75%	Low
Spot Instances	None	Up to 90%	Lowest

S3 Cost Optimization

# Set up Intelligent Tiering
aws s3api put-bucket-intelligent-tiering-configuration \
  --bucket my-bucket \
  --id config-name \
  --intelligent-tiering-configuration '{
    "Id": "config-name",
    "Status": "Enabled",
    "Tierings": [
      {"Days": 90, "AccessTier": "ARCHIVE_ACCESS"},
      {"Days": 180, "AccessTier": "DEEP_ARCHIVE_ACCESS"}
    ]
  }'

# Lifecycle policy for old objects
aws s3api put-bucket-lifecycle-configuration \
  --bucket my-bucket \
  --lifecycle-configuration file://lifecycle.json

GCP Cost Optimization

Billing Export Analysis

-- BigQuery: Top spending services
SELECT
  service.description,
  SUM(cost) as total_cost
FROM `project.dataset.billing_export`
WHERE invoice.month = '202401'
GROUP BY service.description
ORDER BY total_cost DESC
LIMIT 10;

-- Unused resources
SELECT
  resource.name,
  SUM(cost) as cost
FROM `project.dataset.billing_export`
WHERE usage.amount = 0
GROUP BY resource.name;

Committed Use Discounts

# Create commitment
gcloud compute commitments create my-commitment \
  --region=us-central1 \
  --resources=vcpu=100,memory=200GB \
  --plan=twelve-month

Preemptible VMs

# Create preemptible instance
gcloud compute instances create my-vm \
  --zone=us-central1-a \
  --machine-type=n2-standard-4 \
  --preemptible \
  --no-restart-on-failure

Azure Cost Optimization

Cost Management

# Get cost by resource group
az consumption usage list \
  --start-date 2024-01-01 \
  --end-date 2024-01-31 \
  --query "[?contains(instanceId, 'my-rg')]"

# Create budget alert
az consumption budget create \
  --budget-name monthly-budget \
  --amount 1000 \
  --category cost \
  --time-grain monthly \
  --start-date 2024-01-01 \
  --end-date 2024-12-31

Azure Advisor Recommendations

# Get cost recommendations
az advisor recommendation list \
  --category Cost \
  --output table

Kubernetes Cost Optimization

Resource Requests/Limits

# Right-sized resources
resources:
  requests:
    cpu: "100m"      # Based on actual usage
    memory: "128Mi"
  limits:
    cpu: "500m"
    memory: "256Mi"

Cluster Autoscaler

# Scale down unused nodes
apiVersion: autoscaling.k8s.io/v1
kind: ClusterAutoscaler
spec:
  scaleDown:
    enabled: true
    delayAfterAdd: 10m
    delayAfterDelete: 10m
    unneededTime: 10m

Spot/Preemptible Nodes

# Node pool with spot instances
apiVersion: v1
kind: NodePool
spec:
  nodeLabels:
    workload-type: "batch"
  taints:
    - key: "spot"
      value: "true"
      effect: "NoSchedule"
  spotInstanceTypes:
    - m5.large
    - m5.xlarge

Cost Monitoring

Alerts and Budgets

# AWS Budget alarm
import boto3

budgets = boto3.client('budgets')

budgets.create_budget(
    AccountId='123456789012',
    Budget={
        'BudgetName': 'monthly-budget',
        'BudgetLimit': {'Amount': '1000', 'Unit': 'USD'},
        'TimeUnit': 'MONTHLY',
        'BudgetType': 'COST'
    },
    NotificationsWithSubscribers=[{
        'Notification': {
            'NotificationType': 'ACTUAL',
            'ComparisonOperator': 'GREATER_THAN',
            'Threshold': 80
        },
        'Subscribers': [{
            'SubscriptionType': 'EMAIL',
            'Address': 'team@example.com'
        }]
    }]
)

Cost Dashboard Metrics

Metric	Description
Daily spend	Current day's costs
MTD spend	Month-to-date total
Forecast	Predicted month-end cost
Variance	Actual vs budget
Cost per unit	Cost per request/user

Optimization Checklist

Compute

• Right-size instances based on utilization
• Use Reserved/Savings Plans for steady workloads
• Use Spot for fault-tolerant workloads
• Auto-scale based on demand
• Shut down dev/test outside hours

Storage

• Enable storage tiering
• Set lifecycle policies
• Delete unattached volumes
• Compress data before storage
• Use appropriate storage class

Network

• Use CDN for static content
• Compress API responses
• Minimize cross-region traffic
• Use VPC endpoints
• Review NAT Gateway usage

Database

• Use reserved capacity
• Optimize queries
• Right-size instances
• Use read replicas efficiently
• Archive old data

Additional Resources

Reference Files

• references/aws-cost-tools.md - AWS cost optimization tools
• references/finops-framework.md - Complete FinOps guide

Example Files

• examples/cost-dashboard.json - Grafana cost dashboard
• examples/budget-alerts.tf - Terraform budget configuration