kevin w11 min
S3 Is Not Cheap — Your Usage Is Expensive
S3 storage is still cheap in July 2026. Request storms, unmanaged versioning, CRR, Express One Zone, and S3 Tables compaction choices are what blow the bill — not GB-month alone.
AWS Cost Optimization & FinOps
Kevin W.
- Published articles
- 69
Articles (69) — Page 6
- kevin w11 min
How Startups Accidentally Burn $100k/month
The worst AWS bills still come from small systems with invisible failure modes. July 2026 refresh — SQS/Lambda retry storms, zombie resources, public AI endpoints, and Bedrock/AgentCore spend loops — plus the detection radar.
- kevin w14 min
How to Prevent Queue-Based Cost Explosions on AWS
SQS is cheap until retry storms: short polling × uncapped workers. July 2026 — long poll 20s, visibility math, DLQ alarms, concurrency caps.
- kevin w12 min
AWS Bill Teardown #3: The Data Transfer Trap That Costs Retailers Every Holiday Season
A mid-size retailer spiked to $87k in November from three data-transfer traps. July 2026 refresh — CloudFront hit-rate math, Origin Shield pricing, cross-AZ ECS, and Transfer Acceleration misuse.
- kevin w13 min
FinOps on AWS: The Complete Guide to Cloud Cost Governance
Cloud cost governance that actually sticks. A comprehensive guide to FinOps on AWS — the Inform/Optimize/Operate framework, AWS-native tools, team structure, and how to know when to hire a FinOps consultant.
- kevin w12 min
AWS Cost Explorer and Budgets: A Cloud Cost Management Guide
Surprise AWS bills usually come from one of a handful of sources. Cost Explorer patterns, budget alerts, anomaly detection, and the tagging discipline that turns "who owns this $4,000 spike" into a 30-second answer instead of a week-long Slack thread.
- kevin w9 min
AWS Lambda Cost Optimization: Pay-Per-Request vs Provisioned
Provisioned Concurrency is still the most over-bought Lambda knob. July 2026: INIT billed since Aug 2025, SnapStart runtimes, ~$54/mo illustrative PC baseline math, Power Tuning before you buy warm capacity.
- kevin w8 min
AWS Managed Services Provider vs DIY: Total Cost of Ownership
"We'll just have our developers manage AWS" still hides a $635k–$1M DIY ops band for 24/7 coverage. July 2026 TCO: staffing, tooling, GenAI ops, and Support plan choices (Business Support+ / Enterprise).
- kevin w7 min
5 AWS Cost Optimization & FinOps Strategies Most Teams Overlook
Beyond Reserved Instances — practical FinOps and AWS cost optimization strategies to reduce your AWS bill by 20-40% without sacrificing performance or reliability.
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