•
AWS Identity and Access Management (IAM): AWS
IAM controls your users’ access to AWS services and
resources.
•
Auto Scaling: Auto Scaling automatically adds or
removes Amazon EC2 instances according to conditions
you define. With Auto Scaling, the number of Amazon
EC2 instances you’re using increases seamlessly during
demand spikes to maintain performance, and decreases
automatically during demand lulls to minimize costs.
•
AWS OpsWorks: AWS OpsWorks is an application
management service that makes it easy to deploy and operate applications of all shapes and sizes.
•
Moreover, you can consolidate all your accounts
using Consolidated Billing and get tiering benefits.
•
Custom pricing. What if none of our pricing models
work for your project? Custom pricing is available for high
volume projects with unique requirements. For assistance,
contact us to speak with a sales representative.
Fundamental Pricing Characteristics
There are three fundamental characteristics you pay for
with AWS: compute, storage, and data transfer out. These
characteristics vary slightly depending on the AWS product
you are using. However, fundamentally these are the core
characteristics that have the greatest impact on cost.
Free Inbound Data Transfer
There is no charge for inbound data
transfer across all Amazon Web Services in all regions. There are no outbound data transfer charges between
Amazon Web Services
within the same region.
Although you are charged for data transfer out, there is no
charge for inbound data transfer or for data transfer between other Amazon Web Services within the same region.
The outbound data transfer is aggregated across Amazon EC2, Amazon S3, Amazon RDS, Amazon SimpleDB,
Amazon SQS, Amazon SNS, and Amazon VPC and then
charged at the outbound data transfer rate. This charge appears on the monthly statement as AWS Data Transfer Out.
The rest of this section breaks down the pricing characteristics for four commonly used AWS products: Amazon Elastic
Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2), Amazon Simple Storage
Service (S3), Amazon Elastic Block Store (EBS), Amazon
Relational Database Service (Amazon RDS), and
Amazon CloudFront.
Pricing is available for each AWS product and its specific
pricing characteristics at http://aws.amazon.com/pricing/.
Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2)
Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2) is a web
service that provides resizable compute capacity in the
cloud. Amazon EC2’s simple web service interface allows
you to obtain and configure capacity with minimal friction.
It provides complete control of your computing resources
on Amazon’s proven computing environment. Amazon EC2
changes the economics of computing by charging you only
for capacity that you actually use.
When you begin to estimate the cost of using Amazon EC2,
you need to consider the following:
•
Clock Hours of Server Time -Resources incur
charges when they are running. For example, from the time
Amazon EC2 instances are launched until they are terminated, or from the time Elastic IPs are allocated until the
time they are de-allocated.
•
Machine Configuration - Consider the physical
capacity of the Amazon EC2 instance you choose. Instance
pricing varies with the AWS region, OS, number of cores,
and memory.
•
Machine Purchase Type - With On-Demand Instances, you pay for compute capacity by the hour with no
required minimum commitments. Reserved Instances give
you the option to make a low, one-time payment for each
instance you want to reserve and in turn receive a significant discount on the hourly usage charge for that instance.
With Spot Instances, you can bid for unused Amazon EC2
capacity. For more information how to further save costs
using Reserved Instances and Spot Instances, see How to
Further Save Costs.
•
Number of Instances -You can provision multiple
instances of your Amazon EC2 and Amazon EBS resources
to handle peak loads.
•
Load Balancing -An Elastic Load Balancer can be
used to distribute traffic among Amazon EC2 instances. The
number of hours the Elastic Load Balancer runs and the
amount of data it processes contribute to the monthly cost.
•
Detailed Monitoring - You can use Amazon C