Everyone wants to save money wherever they can, and that includes reducing their spend in their Google Cloud Platform. The Google Cloud Platforms adoption rate is aggressively growing driven by competitive pricing and increased credibility, which makes you think that your costs would be fine.
But your spend in Google Cloud Platform can creep up on you, and no one wants to be spending more money than they need to be.
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Don’t worry—we have three ways that you can reduce your spend in your Google Cloud Platform environment, and it doesn’t need to be complicated.
1. Delete snapshots when no longer needed
Individual snapshots themselves aren’t expensive, but when you have hundreds the cost can quickly add up. This seemingly small amount can sneak up on a lot of business, which means you should always be monitoring how much you are spending on them, even when it’s only a few snapshots.
Companies can control snapshots by monitoring their cost and usage per Compute Engine VM to make sure they don’t spike out of control. It’s best to have a system company-wide on how many snapshots should be retained per Compute Engine VM, so everyone can always be on the same page.
2. Terminate zombie assets
Zombie assets are infrastructure components that are running in your cloud environment but are not being used for any purpose. They come in many forms so make sure you are aware of any and all types of zombie assets.
But no matter the cause or type, you will be charged for them as long as they are running. These assets must be isolated, evaluated, and immediately terminated if deemed nonessential. This is another thing that you need to stay on top of where a few can become many, and start costing your company a significant amount.
3. Migrate to smaller storage
When you start with the Google Cloud object storage environment, you need to ensure you are using the right storage class. Google offers four object storage classes, all varying sizes, and prices.
Just like anything else, you need to make sure your workloads are in the right storage class. While newer workloads may start off needing higher storage, later down the line they will probably need smaller storage. By not continuously updating these your company could be spending a big price difference in wasted storage space.
Reducing spend consists of knowing important tweaks that have a rippling effect on your cloud costs. Each and every tip helps you reduce your cost and as an added benefit they also usually make your systems more efficient.
Learn more about the eight best practices for reducing spend in GCP from our ebook here, or learn how to build long term success in GCP here.
