Rightsizing can be an intimidating proposition, especially when you have pages of recommendations to review and whilst there is no one word answer to the question "how do I rightsize my cloud infrastructure?", there are two things we can discuss to help you think about rightsizing, what you are going to do and who's going to do it. Strategy and Process.
Strategy
Let's start thinking about effort and reward; you're new to rightsizing, so it makes sense to get some practise and start with something relatively low effort... terminate recommendations
Terminate recommendations are based on idle resources that are just sitting there, to action the recommendation you need to verify the resource is indeed idle and not needed (not part of your DR infrastructure, for example) and then terminate it (whilst also making sure it is removed from any IaC). Terminate recommendations are a great way for your team(s) to get used to the rightsizing process and as the solution to the recommendation is simply to turn the resource off, your team should be able to get through the recommendations relatively quickly. Don't forget to prioritise the recommendations in order of reward and action the biggest savings first.
Now you've got some practice and the terminate recommendations are out of the way, it's time to start thinking about the remaining recommendations. Keep thinking about 'reward' as we prioritise and let's start with the highest savings recommendations; take a look at the potential savings from your recommendations and list them highest to lowest, now let's think about categorising these savings by reward, e.g. +$5K, $3K-$5K, $1K-$3K, $0-$1K. Now you've got a priority list that your team(s) can start working through, banking the largest rewards first. Another thing to consider is Prod vs Non Prod; if Prod is going to be a significant challenge to rightsize, try starting with your Non Prod environments, whilst you continue to plan and prioritise your Prod environment. Always try to balance effort and reward.
Process
Now we've got a rightsizing strategy, we need to think about who is going to work on it. This depends significantly on your businesses size and structure, for example, central vs edge.
A centrally based process, that might be more suitable for larger businesses, could set up a Cloud Centre of Excellence (CCoE) Team that has multiple duties, one of which being the strategy and allocation of rightsizing recommendations. This central team will issue the recommendations to the appropriate infrastructure teams to review and action and will record the outcome of the actions as well as any savings.
An edge based process, that might be more suitable for smaller businesses, could see application teams having accountability and responsibility for rightsizing their own infrastructure. These teams retrieve, prioritise and record their own recommendations and savings, without the involvement of an external body. A self managed team.
Remember there is no right or wrong way of rightsizing your infrastructure, there is simply the way that works best for you.
Good luck.
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Rich Jones
Technical Account Manager for Apptio Cloudability
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