AWS storage cost analysis: Find where money is being wasted

S3 looks cheap (£0.023 per GB for Standard). But Standard is expensive for old data. Most storage waste comes from data in the wrong storage class.

Step 1: Analyze current costs

Use AWS Cost Explorer. Filter by service. Look at S3, EBS, RDS (storage component).

Break down S3 by storage class. Standard probably costs more than Intelligent-Tiering + Glacier combined. That's wrong.

Step 2: Find waste patterns

Old backups in Standard. Aged logs in Standard. Archive data in Standard.

Data that hasn't been accessed in 90 days should move to cheaper storage. Move to Glacier (£0.004/GB). 83% cheaper.

Step 3: Set Lifecycle Policies

New data: Standard (fast, expensive).

30 days old: Intelligent-Tiering (AWS optimizes).

90 days old: Glacier (cold, cheap).

1 year old: Glacier Deep Archive (archived, very cheap).

Apply to all S3 buckets automatically.

Step 4: Fix EBS

EBS gp2 costs £0.10/GB/month. gp3 costs £0.08/GB/month. Same performance, cheaper.

Convert gp2 to gp3. Instant savings.

Remove unattached volumes. They still cost money.

Step 5: Optimize RDS

RDS storage costs scale with database size. Large tables with unused indexes waste space.

Identify and delete unused tables. Compress data where possible.

Use RDS Aurora where appropriate. Better pricing for large databases.

Real savings example

2TB in Standard: £46/month.

Move 1.8TB to Glacier: £7/month.

Savings: £39/month = £468/year.

One afternoon of work. £468 annual savings.

Where Critical Cloud comes in

Storage analysis requires querying usage patterns over time. Most teams guess. We track it.

We show storage cost by bucket, by storage class, by age. You see exactly where waste is happening.

If storage bills feel high, see how Critical Support works.