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Corey: This episode is sponsored in part by LaunchDarkly. Take a look at what it takes to get your code into production. I’m going to just guess that it’s awful because it’s always awful. No one loves their deployment process. What if launching new features didn’t require you to do a full-on code and possibly infrastructure deploy? What if you could test on a small subset of users and then roll it back immediately if results aren’t what you expect? LaunchDarkly does exactly this. To learn more, visit launchdarkly.com and tell them Corey sent you, and watch for the wince.

Jesse: Welcome to AWS Morning Brief: Fridays From the Field. I’m Jesse DeRose.

Amy: I’m Amy Negrette.

Jesse: This is the podcast within a podcast where we talk about all the ways we’ve seen AWS used and abused in the wild, with a healthy dose of complaining about AWS for good measure because I mean, who doesn’t love to complain about AWS? I feel like that’s always a good thing that we can talk about, no matter the topic. Today, we’re going to be talking about the ‘cloud cost management starter kit.’ So, the starter kit seems to be a big fad that’s going around. If you’re listening to this episode, you’re probably thinking, “It’s already done. It’s over.”

But I still want to talk about it. I think that this is a really relevant topic because I think a lot of companies are trying to get started, get their hands started in cloud cost management. So, I think this would be a great thing for us to talk about: what’s in our cloud cost management starter kit?

Amy: And it really will help answer that question that I get asked a lot on: what is even a cloud economist, and what do you do?

Jesse: Yeah, I mean, given the current timeframe, I haven’t gone to any parties recently to talk about what I do, but I do feel like anytime I try to explain to somebody what I do, there’s always that moment of, “Okay. Yes, I work with computers, and we’ll just leave it at that.”

Amy: It’s easier to just think about it as we look at receipts, and we kind of figure things out. But when you try to get into the nuts and bolts of it, it’s a very esoteric idea that we’re trying to explain. And no, I don’t know why this is a real job. And yet it is.

Jesse: This is one of the things that always fascinates me. I absolutely love the work that I do, and I definitely think that it is important work that needs to be done for any organization, to work on their cloud cost management best practices, but it also boggles my mind that AWS, Azure, GCP, haven’t figured out how to bake this in more clearly and easily to all of their workflows and all their services. It still boggles my mind that this is something that exists as—

Amy: As a thing we have to do.

Jesse: As a thing we have to do. Yeah, absolutely.

Amy: Well, the good news is, they’re going to change their practices once every six weeks, and we’ll have a new thing to figure it out. [laugh].

Jesse: [laugh]. So, let’s get started with the first item on our cloud cost management starter kit. This one is something that Amy is definitely passionate about; I am definitely passionate about, as well. Amy, what is it?

Amy: Turn on your CUR. Turn on your CUr. If you don’t know what it is, just Google AWS CUR. Turn it on. It will save you a headache, and it will save anyone you bring in to help you [laugh] [unintelligible 00:02:59] a huge headache. And it keeps us from having to yell at people, even though that’s the thing that if you pay us to do it, we will totally do it for you.

Jesse: If you take nothing away from this episode, go check out the AWS Cost and Usage Report—otherwise known as CUR—turn it on for your accounts, ideally enable it in Parquet format because that’s going to allow you to get all that sweet, sweet data in an optimized manner, living in your S3 bucket. It is a godsend. It gives you all the data from Cost Explorer, and then some. It allows you to do all sorts of really interesting business intelligence analytics on your billing data. It’s absolutely fantastic.

Amy: It’s like getting all of those juicy infrastructure metrics, except getting that with a dollar sign attached to it so you know what you actually doing with that money.

Jesse: Yeah, this definitely is, like, the first step towards doing any kind of showback models, or chargeback models, or even unit economics to figuring out where your spend is going. The Cost and Usage Report is going to be a huge first step in that direction.

Amy: Now, the reason why we yell at people about this—or at least I do—is because AWS will only show you the data from the time that it is turned on. They do have it for historical periods, but if you enable it at a specific point, all of your reports are going to start there. So, if you’re looking to do forecasting, or you want to be able to know what your usage is going to be looking like from this point on, turn it on as early as possible.

Jesse: Absolutely. If you are listening to this now and you don’t have the CUR enabled, definitely go pause this episode, enable it now, and come back and listen to the rest of the episode because the sooner you have the CUR enabled, the sooner you’ll be able to get those sweet, sweet metrics for all of your—

Amy: And it’s free.

Jesse: [laugh]. Yeah, that’s even the more important part. It’s free. There’s going to be a little bit of data storage costs if you send this data to S3, but overall, the amount of money that you spend on that storage is going to be optimized because you’re saving that CUR data in Parquet format. It’s absolutely worthwhile.

All right, so number two; the second item on our cloud cost management starter kit, is getting to know your AWS account manager and account team. This one, I feel like a lot of people don’t actually know that they have an AWS account manager. But let me tell you now: if you have an AWS account, you have an AWS account manager. Even if they haven’t reached out to you before they do exist, you have access to them, and you should absolutely start building a rapport with them.

Amy: Anytime you are paying for a support plan, you also have an account manager. This isn’t just true for AWS; I would be very surprised for any service that charged you for support but did not give you an account manager.

Jesse: So, for those of you who aren’t familiar with your account manager, they are generally somebody who will be able to help you navigate some of the more complex parts of AWS, especially when you have any kind of questions about your bill or about technical things using AWS. They will help you navigate those resources and make sure that your questions are getting to the teams that can actually answer them, and then make sure that those questions are actually getting answered. They are the best champion for you within AWS.

If you have more than a certain threshold of spend on AWS, if you’re paying for enterprise support, you likely also have a dedicated technical account manager as well, who will be basically your point person for any technical questions. They are a great resource for any technical questions, making sure that your technical questions are answered, making sure that any conce...