Financial Operations (FinOps) is becoming more relevant than ever for I&O organizations that are moving towards cloud. When moving towards a cloud operating model it is necessary to provide the consumers of the platform with the right information when it comes to the associated cost of the consumed services.
This is where FinOps comes into play. FinOps is the part that deals with Cloud Financial Management. It is a cultural practice that makes sure that consumers of the platform are aware of the associates costs. Next to that FinOps teams take care of the making the costs visible within the organization to business leadership and cloud owners. And make sure that cloud operators take cost requirements and considerations into account when building, managing and maintaining cloud services.
Private vs. Public
There is of course a difference between cost management in the public cloud versus that in the private cloud. With public cloud the cost associated with the cloud services are determined by the public cloud provider.
In the private cloud the I&O organization themselves are responsible for architecture, deploying and managing the private cloud stack. And with that the associated costs and management of those costs.
Kubernetes and FinOps
The same applies to Kubernetes. If you run your Kubernetes workloads yourself, in your own private cloud, you are the one that then needs to provide insight into the associated costs of the Kubernetes stack.
That of course depends on the costs that are related to the costs that come with the hardware and software to run the Kubernetes stack and the labour that comes to architect, deploy and manage the Kubernetes stack.
vRealize Operations is the private cloud management solution that provides capabilities to manage costs within a private cloud. It gives cloud operators and FinOps the tools to help plan the capacity for the cloud and the associate costs. This way we can provide insight of the costs that can be allocated to Kubernetes.
For more information see here.
Of course this is different for public clouds. There the Kubernetes stacks are delivered as a service. Still it is important to understand what the cost are that are associated with the deployment of Kubernetes stacks. Maybe even more important than in the private cloud as every deployment of Kubernetes on AWS, Azure or Google costs money on instantiation.
For this VMware has CloudHealth cloud management solutions. CloudHealth is a multi-cloud management solution that can provide cost insight across multiple clouds. It also includes the ability to provide insight into the costs associated with Kubernetes stacks.
For more information view the following links:
Managing Cloud Costs with Kubernetes: 5 Best Practices to Optimize Your Kubernetes Cloud Costs
Managing Cloud Costs with Kubernetes: 5 Questions You Should Be Asking
Or register to get the whitepaper : FinOps for Kubernetes: Unpacking Container Cost Allocation and Optimization.
