As the year winds down and plans for the next take shape, one thing remains clear: tracking your FinOps team’s cost savings and avoidance is essential for long-term success. Whether your organization uses a custom application, a simple spreadsheet, or something in between, a well-structured FinOps Ledger can be a game-changer.

Why a FinOps Ledger? Because it goes beyond tracking numbers—it tells the story of your team’s impact. It allows you to monitor the results of your work, refine strategies, and communicate value effectively to stakeholders.

What to Include in Your FinOps Ledger
To get the most out of your FinOps Ledger, make sure to include the following elements:

• Task/Service: Clearly define the initiative or focus area, e.g., Compute Optimization, S3 Cleanup, RDS Rightsizing.
• ID: Map your task to a Savings Plan (SP) or Reserved Instance (RI) ID for traceability.
• Service: Specify the AWS service involved, such as RDS, EC2, or S3.
• Status: Track the progress of each task (e.g., Realized, In Progress, Blocked, Backlog).
• Savings: Record both monthly and annual cost savings achieved through optimization efforts.
• Avoided Costs: Highlight costs you’ve managed to avoid—again, both monthly and annually.
• Notes: Add important context and details about each task.
• Explanation: Document how you calculated the savings or avoided costs, making it easy to justify and validate the results.

The Impact of a Well-Maintained Ledger
A FinOps Ledger isn't just about documentation—it's a powerful tool for:

• Demonstrating ROI: Show how your team’s efforts contribute to cost efficiency and business value.
• Driving Strategic Decisions: Identify areas to target for further optimization.
• Boosting Team Morale: Celebrate the tangible wins and progress your team makes throughout the year.

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How Are You Tracking FinOps Wins?
Whether you’re just starting to build your ledger or have an established process, let’s keep the conversation going! Join the conversation over on LinkedIn, or connect with me directly on my LinkedIn page if you’d like to explore how we can collaborate on AWS cost optimization! 

Managing DynamoDB costs just got a whole lot easier, thanks to a new feature in AWS Cost Management.

What's New?
AWS now provides purchase recommendations for Amazon DynamoDB Reserved Capacity, making it simpler to identify savings opportunities and optimize your cost structure.

Reserved Capacity has long been a cost-effective way to manage large DynamoDB workloads, offering significant savings compared to on-demand pricing. But the challenge has always been knowing when to commit and how much capacity to reserve. This new feature removes much of the guesswork, analyzing your usage patterns to surface tailored recommendations.

Why It Matters
For businesses running substantial DynamoDB workloads, Reserved Capacity isn't just a cost-saving mechanism – it's a strategy for balancing:

• Performance: Ensuring high availability and predictable throughput.
• Cost Optimization: Minimizing unnecessary expenses by aligning capacity to actual usage.
• Predictability: Locking in consistent pricing to simplify financial planning.

With AWS's recommendations, you can make data-driven decisions that save both time and money while maintaining the performance your applications need.

Getting Started
If you're managing large DynamoDB workloads, now is the perfect time to explore Reserved Capacity. Review the recommendations in the AWS Cost Management console and evaluate how they align with your workload needs.

Let’s Collaborate
Have you explored using Reserved Capacity for DynamoDB, or do you have questions about whether it's right for your use case? Join the conversation over on LinkedIn, or reach out to me directly on my LinkedIn page. ​I'd love to hear your thoughts or help you uncover opportunities to optimize your AWS costs.

AWS’s 14 days of free historical resource-level data in Cost Explorer is a game-changer for anyone seeking granular visibility into their cloud cost drivers. This feature provides a lightweight and user-friendly alternative to the more complex Cost and Usage Report (CUR), allowing you to dive deep into your costs without the overhead of managing extensive datasets.

But beyond this well-known functionality lies a lesser-known benefit that FinOps practitioners should be leveraging: the Cost Explorer API. This API extends the capabilities of AWS’s cost management tools, offering programmatic access to the same resource-level data. By utilizing the API, organizations can conduct advanced FinOps analysis and create custom reports without needing to query the CUR through distributed query engines like Athena or Spark. This approach can save both time and effort, making cost analysis more accessible and actionable.

How We Use the Cost Explorer API at Brandorr Group
At Brandorr Group, we’ve adopted the Cost Explorer API in ways that go beyond its original intent. Here are two key use cases:

1. Inventorying Accounts Without Direct Access The Cost Explorer API enables us to gain insights into cost drivers for individual accounts, even when we only have access to the organizational billing account. This capability is invaluable for organizations managing multiple accounts under a single billing hierarchy
2. Aggregating EBS Snapshot Costs By combining resource-level data from the API with EBS snapshot inventories, we’re able to provide detailed per-volume cost breakdowns. This level of granularity helps our customers identify specific opportunities for cost optimization.

Additional Use Cases
In addition to the scenarios above, we regularly leverage the Cost Explorer API to:

• Identify high-spend accounts and regions for specific services.
• Generate detailed, customized reports for stakeholders.
• Uncover cost-saving opportunities without the complexity of querying the full CUR.

The flexibility and accessibility of the API make it an indispensable tool in our FinOps toolkit.

Why the Cost Explorer API Matters
The 14 days of free resource-level data is just the tip of the iceberg. When paired with the Cost Explorer API, this data becomes a powerful resource for simplifying cloud cost analysis. Whether you’re tracking costs across accounts, identifying inefficiencies, or creating custom visualizations, the API offers a robust foundation for actionable insights.

Join the Conversation
Are you using the Cost Explorer API? Have questions about how to get started or ideas for maximizing its potential? Let’s discuss! Join the conversation over on LinkedIn, or connect with me directly on my LinkedIn page if  you’d like to explore opportunities to work together on AWS cost optimization.

​Amazon ElastiCache for Redis continues to raise the bar, delivering faster, more reliable, and cost-efficient caching solutions. With every release, AWS reinforces its commitment to improving the customer experience, helping businesses achieve greater performance and savings.

If you’re still running an older version of ElastiCache for Redis, it might be time to consider an upgrade. Redis (Valkey) 7.2 offers a host of benefits that could transform your infrastructure and boost your bottom line.

Here’s why upgrading should be on your to-do list:

Why Upgrade Now?
The older your version of ElastiCache for Redis, the greater the potential benefits of upgrading. Each new version introduces better performance, cost savings, and reliability—don’t let outdated software hold your infrastructure back.

Ready to Upgrade?
If you’re looking to maximize your ElastiCache for Redis deployment, consider making the leap to Redis (Valkey) 7.2 today. Whether you’re optimizing costs, enhancing performance, or improving scalability, these upgrades are designed to unlock the full potential of your stack.

Let’s Collaborate
Have questions or insights about upgrading ElastiCache for Redis or optimizing your AWS infrastructure? Join the conversation over on LinkedIn, or connect with me directly on my LinkedIn page to explore how we can work together to achieve your cloud performance and cost management goals.