DEV Community

Ramandeep Singh
Ramandeep Singh

Posted on

Amazon OpenSearch Service - Vector Database

#aws #vectordatabase #opensource #programming

Amazon OpenSearch Service is a fully managed service that provides search and analytics capabilities powered by Apache Lucene. It serves as the successor to Amazon Elasticsearch Service. This document examines the costs associated with creating an Amazon OpenSearch Service domain, particularly relevant given the increased usage and demand driven by Large Language Models (LLMs), Knowledge Bases, and Generative AI applications.
Creating an Amazon OpenSearch Service domain in AWS will incur costs if you proceed beyond the AWS Free Tier allowances.

📌 Summary of Costs for Amazon OpenSearch Service:

✅ Free Tier Eligibility (if applicable):

AWS offers a Free Tier for Amazon OpenSearch Service, which includes:

  • 750 hours of a t2.small (or t3.small) OpenSearch instance.
  • 10 GiB of storage per month.
  • This is available to new AWS customers for 12 months from account creation.

If your domain uses only the eligible instance type and stays within the storage limit, then it will be free during the Free Tier period.

💰 Costs Incurred Beyond Free Tier:

If you exceed the Free Tier or use non-eligible configurations, you will be charged based on:

  1. Instance Hours:

    • Charges are based on the number of instance hours your domain runs.
    • Example: Using a m4.large.search or r5.xlarge.search will incur hourly charges.

  2. Storage:

    • You're billed for the amount of EBS storage provisioned.
    • Cost example: ~$0.10/GB-month (varies by region).

  3. Data Transfer:

    • Data transferred out to the internet or between regions is charged.

  4. Snapshot Backups:

    • Storage of automated snapshots in Amazon S3 is also billed.

  5. Optional Features:

    • Fine-grained access control, encryption, VPC access, and advanced monitoring can increase usage or require more powerful instances.

🔍 Example Scenario:

If you create a domain with:

  • 2 x m4.large.search instances
  • 100 GiB storage

Then:

  • You’re outside the Free Tier.
  • You’ll be billed hourly for instance usage (~$0.138/hour for each m4.large as of writing).
  • Storage cost (~$0.10 * 100 = $10/month).
  • Total estimated monthly cost could be ~$30–$50+, depending on usage and data transfer.

💡 Tips to Control Costs:

  • Use t2/t3.small if staying within Free Tier.
  • Monitor usage via AWS Cost Explorer.
  • Delete unused domains.
  • Enable Auto-Tune and proper instance sizing.
  • Consider Off-Peak Hours or dev/test environments that you shut down when not in use.

🧾 Check Billing Details:

You can monitor OpenSearch-related charges under:

  • AWS Billing Console > Cost Explorer
  • Filter by service: Amazon OpenSearch Service

Top comments (0)