re:Invent 2021 AWS Cost Optimization Sessions

With over 60,000+ attendees, 50 tracks, and over 1,200 sessions to weed through at AWS re:Invent, it can be a bit overwhelming to figure out what sessions to attend.

If you are interested in sessions related to managing and optimizing your AWS cost, aka as Cloud Financial Management/FinOps, Mike Rosenberg posted on LinkedIn a helpful image of all the sessions related to the topic for us last week in one place:

In addition, the AWS Cloud Financial Management team is setting up a Kiosk in the expo hall. Their schedule in the export hall:

• Mon: 4-7 PM.
• Tues-Weds: 10 AM to 6 PM
• Thurs from: 10 AM to 4 PM

If you are looking for someone to talk to directly, I highly recommend seeking out Mike Rosenberg, who works on that team. I met Mike when he was working at Arity, and he is extremely knowledgeable in this area of Cloud Financial Management FinOps (AWS Cost Optimization). He’s literally a guru or wizard when it comes to managing AWS costs.

AWS Cost Optimization Guides from CloudForecast.

In addition to this, we also wrote up great articles and resources on AWS cost optimization:

• RDS Pricing and Cost Optimization Guide
• ECS Pricing and Container Optimization Guide
• CloudFront Pricing and Cost Optimization Guide
• S3 Pricing and Cost Optimization Guide
• EMR Cost Optimization Guide
• AWS NAT Gateway Pricing and Cost Reduction Guide

AWS re:Invent Cost Optimization Sessions

Here are the sessions summarized for you by days from Mike’s screenshot:

Monday, November 29th

• 10:00 AM: Amazon S3 Lifecycle Best Practices to Optimize Your Storage Spend [STG346] – Breakout Session
• 10:45 AM: 8 Ways to Control and Manage AWS Costs (Repeat) [COP204-R1] – Chalk Talk
• 10:45 AM: Amazon EBS Cost Optimization [STG218] – Workshop
• 4:00 PM: Hand-on with AWS Graviton2-based Amazon EC2 Instances (Repeat) [CMP308-R1] – Workshop
• 4:00 PM: Improving Cost Visibility and Allocation [COP202] – Breakout Session
• 4:00 PM: Optimize Price and Performance with Amazon FSx and for Lustre [STG310]- Workshop
• 4:00 PM: Walking Cost Optimization (Repeat) [ARC315-R1] – Chalk Talk
• 4:45 PM: How to Optimize Amazon S3 (repeat) [STG338-R1] – Builders Session
• 6:15 PM: Cost Control and Governance At Scale [COP203] – Breakout Session

Tuesday, November 30th

• 11:45 AM: Build Your Own Customizable Cost Reporting Dashboards [COP211] – Workshop
• 2:45 PM: Amazon S3 Cost Optimization Using S3 Storage Lens (Repeat) – Chalk Talk
• 4:15 PM: Optimize Compute For Cost and Capacity [CMP210] – Breakout Session
• 5:45 PM: CloudOps: Best Practices for Optimizing Cloud Services [COP214-S] – Breakout Session

Wednesday, December 1st

• 9:15 AM: Optimizing Resources Efficiency with AWS Compute Optimizer [CMP220] – Breakout Session
• 10:45 AM: Driving a Cost-conscious Culture with FinOps [COP209-S] – Breakout Session
• 11:30 AM: How to Optimize Amazon S3 [STG338-R2] – Builders Session
• 12:15 PM: Hands-on with AWS Graviton2-based Amazon EC2 Instances – Workshop
• 3:15 PM: Selecting and Optimizing Amazon EC2 Instances [CMP221] – Breakout Session
• 4:45 PM: Lessons Learned from Customers Who Have Adopted AWS Graviton [CMP213] – Chalk Talk

Thursday, December 2nd

• 12:20 PM: Cost Optimization Stretching Your Runway To Go Further [STP217] – Builders Session

Friday, December 3rd

• 8:30 AM: 8 Ways To Control Cost and Manage AWS Costs (repeat) [COP204-R2] – Chalk Talk
• 8:30 AM: Best Practices for Cost Optimization with Amazon S3 [STG347] – Breakout Session
• 10:00 AM: How volt-VAR Optimization on AWS Can Cut Utility Emissions [PNU305] – Chalk Talk
• 10:45 AM: Amazon S3 Cost Optimization Using S3 Storage Lens (repeat) [STG321-R2] – Chalk Talk
• 10:45 AM: Talking Cost Optimization (repeat) [ARC315-R2] – Chalk Talk

I hope the summary from Mike Rosenberg was helpful for you as you pick out your sessions for the week.

As always, if you have any questions about cost optimization, we’re always happy to help and talk more about it. We also have a feature called ZeroWaste that can help you report on possible inefficiencies within S3, EC2, RDS, EBS Volumes, and a few other areas:

Have fun and be safe at re:Invent 2021. Be sure not to party too hard so you can make it home alive!