Debugging the Cloud Bill for fun and actual profit

Every cloud engineering decision is a buying decision yet how can dev measure the cost of their actions much less even get access to the bill? When finance turns their attention to Dev, demanding they get cost under control how best can DevOps debug the problem and monitor it going forward?

It’s the end of the month and the finance team has exhausted all of their options to bring cost under control. Desperate they have now turned their attention to engineering with the “simple” demand: Cut the bill in half! but where do you even turn to start debugging the problem? With every cloud engineering decision now a buying decision why do so few of us know how to measure the cost of our actions much less even have access to the bill?

This talk will provide technical cost guidance for teams building cloud-native, serverless or containerized applications with real-world examples of fixable cloud cost disasters and the investigative steps needed to find the root cause and bring cloud cost observability into your engineering and operational process. You will leave this talk equipped with the knowledge necessary to both root out technical cost debt and prevent new cost surprises from ever happening again.

I’ve been building cloud-native systems for over a decade both as a practitioner and a hands-on leader, most recently I founded my own cloud-focused company where I am the CTO. I’ve had the fortune to speak to audiences from a few dozen to a few thousand and it’s always an honor to have that opportunity.