AWS RDS Over-Provisioning Adds Hidden Costs

The Silent Drain on Your Cloud Budget

We thought we were being prudent. Our philosophy for provisioning databases was 'better safe than sorry.' If a team *might* need a powerful database instance, we gave it to them. No sense in having performance bottlenecks cripple a critical application, right?

This approach worked… sort of. We didn't have database performance issues. What we *did* have was a steadily creeping AWS bill that nobody could quite explain.

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The $7,200 Surprise

The truth hit us during a routine cost analysis. We discovered a cluster of db.m5.4xlarge RDS instances, humming away at a collective cost of $7,200 per month. The problem? They were powering non-critical internal applications, and their average CPU utilization hovered around a dismal 15%.

Classic over-provisioning. We were paying for horsepower we simply didn't need.

Manual Downsizing: A Sisyphean Task

Our initial response was to try and manually downsize these instances. We researched alternative instance types, like db.m5.large, which seemed like a reasonable fit given the actual workload. But the process was slow, error-prone, and required careful coordination with the application teams. We quickly realized that manually managing dozens of RDS instances across multiple environments was unsustainable.

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EazyOps: Automation to the Rescue

That's when we turned to EazyOps. Its automated rightsizing recommendations pinpointed the over-provisioned RDS instances and suggested the appropriate db.m5.large alternatives. What would have taken us weeks of manual effort, EazyOps accomplished in minutes. Even better, the platform provided detailed cost analysis showing us the potential savings – a whopping 60% reduction in our RDS spend.

The Impact: More Than Just Cost Savings

Implementing EazyOps' recommendations not only slashed our RDS costs by $4,320 per month but also freed up valuable engineering time. We no longer had to spend hours wrestling with instance sizing and database migrations. Instead, we could focus on higher-value tasks like improving application performance and developing new features. EazyOps even gave us the confidence to experiment with different instance types, knowing that its automated analysis would prevent us from accidentally overspending.

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Lessons Learned: Rightsizing is Key

This experience taught us a valuable lesson: over-provisioning can be a silent budget killer. Regularly reviewing and rightsizing your cloud resources, especially databases, is crucial for maintaining cost efficiency. Automation tools like EazyOps make this process significantly easier and more effective, allowing you to optimize your cloud spend without sacrificing performance.

About Shujat

Shujat is a Senior Backend Engineer at EazyOps, working at the intersection of performance engineering, cloud cost optimization, and AI infrastructure. He writes to share practical strategies for building efficient, intelligent systems.