iS Cloud (AWS) computing actually cheap !? part 2

This is part1
https://dev.to/nawras_lateef/costs-and-benefits-part-1-2cfi

AWS: Billing and Pricing

Capex vs. Opex

Basic Pricing Policies are as follows:

1. Pay as you go
2. Pay less when you reserve
3. Pay even less per unit when using more
4. Pay less when AWS grows
5. Custom Pricing

Understand the fundamentals of pricing
Three main drivers of cost with AWS:

1. Compute (EC2, Lambda)
2. Storage (S3, Glacier, Storage Gateway)
3. Data Outbound

Free Services:

• Amazon VPC.
• Elastic Beanstalk.
• CloudFormation.
• Identity Access Manager.
• AutoScaling.
• OpsWorks.

• Consolidated Billing.
  Although all the services mentioned are free, the resources that they use may not be free. For example, elastic beanstalk is free but if you decided to attach an EC2 instance to it, you’d pay for those services. So keep in mind that these services are free but the resources they use may not be free.

• Start early with cost optimization
  It will be easier to put cost visibility and control mechanisms in place before the environment grows large and complex.

• Maximize the power of flexibility
  Choose and pay for exactly what you need and no more.

• Use the right pricing model for the job.
  you are offered a variety of options

• On Demand — Allows you to pay a fixed rate by the hour.
  Dedicated Instance — Physical server dedicated for your use and reduce costs by allowing you to use existing server bound software licenses.

• Spot Instances — Bid a price you want for instance capacity providing for even greater savings if you apps have flexible start and end times.

• Reservations — provides capacity reservation, and offers a significant discount on the hourly charge for an instance. Contract terms can last 1–3 years.

AWS Budget vs Cost Explorer:

AWS Budget gives you the ability to set custom budgets that alert you when your cost or usage exceed your budget amount. This is used to budget costs before they have been incurred.
AWS Cost Explorer has an easy to use interface that lets you mange, visualize, and understand your AWS costs and usage over time. This is used to explore cost after they have been incurred.

Resources:

• https://johnsonkow.medium.com/aws-billing-and-pricing-6635537b25f6
• https://cupofcode.blog/intro-to-aws-billing-and-pricing/