Welcome to another blog on AWS Pricing calculator. Earlier we have seen on estimating the cost that will be incurred for a given workload to be migrated into AWS or based on particular services

Though it is obvious that the Pricing shown in AWS Pricing Calculator is only an estimate and not actuals. But yet, we overlook certain aspects while performing the estimations, and here are few tips to get it closer to near real time pricing

Tip 1

• From the example estimate above, we could see services wise break up for total cost for a month. If you observe closely, the amount listed is in USD and hence actual payment will be more or less, depending on your geographical locations' currency exchange rate

Tip 2

Consider the same example in Tip #1. Few services are added while estimating but when actual implementation happen, we could have added or removed certain services based on business requirement. Thus, estimated Vs actuals will nowhere be near to an approximation. Other factors include

(i) Change in AWS Region
(ii) Change in Services' usage level etc.

So this is one major area that needs to be looked at. Post the architecture decision, ensure that new list of services/region/usage are reflected in the estimates

Tip 3

Every organization or unlike individual(s) will fall under the support category of Basic to Enterprise. During the journey of Cloud Transformation, teams might have to reach out to AWS Support out of need basis and this will be according to the support plan chosen or expected. Factor in the AWS Support costs during the estimation., Trust me, this will ensure most closest estimation with actuals.

To include Support Plan in your estimation, follow the below steps

Step 1

• Go to the AWS Pricing Calculator's estimate page using Link
• Click on "Add Support" from the console view to reach the above screen
• Give a description for this support estimate being added
• Next, select the "Technical Support Levels". My selection here is "Multiple AWS associates can email or call me 24/7" as I needed instant support access for my business needs

Step 2

• Next one is about choosing the "High Severity Response Times"
• I need response from AWS Team from "30 Minutes or less" and selected this option from the many choices there

Step 3

• Given my choices on "Technical Support Level" & "High Severity Response" timelines, I get to choose from 2 options "Enterprise On-Ramp" & "Enterprise Support Plan" respectively
• I go with "Enterprise On-Ramp" with my budget as baseline

Step 4

• Here is the total Support cost on a monthly basis which is $5500 USD
• Click on "Add to Estimate" to get this reflected with your Architecture estimates which are created already, to get a complete picture of total estimated cost

Step 5

• Above is the view & complete estimation which is more closer to the actuals which will appear when the solutions in use or live
• This practice ensures that the estimate(s) are more realistic

P.S. Costs in these screenshots are example only which uses Carrier IP as the only service and doesn't include EC2 here. Hence support costs looks more compared to the actual solutions' cost. But in reality, the actual architecture will take majority of the cost & spend

Tip 4

Best one saved for the last !! AWS accounts or AWS Services free tier period, promotional credit towards a service and/or credits that are given by AWS, could all reflect in the reduction in billing from the estimated value of monthly usage. Yay !!! Sweet Surprise :-)

Happy Estimating !!