Definiton & Synonyms
FinOps refers to the discipline of cloud financial management to get the most out of cloud spending. Other synonyms are Cloud Financial Management, Cloud Financial Engineering, Cloud Cost Management, Cloud Optimization or Cloud Financial Optimization. The word FinOps is made up of the two words Finance and DevOps.
In the meantime, a FinOps Foundation has even been founded for FinOps.
Main features and actions in FinOps Practice.
Basically, the FinOps practice is about getting the most out of your cloud spend. This involves periodically evaluating cloud spending for optimization potential.
This can be resizings, such as downsizings or e.g. also through the use of other CPUs, such as ARM CPUs. Actions such as reservations, out- or downscalings are typical to achieve cost savings.
These evaluations and also actions from the evaluations can be carried out very manually here, but can also be carried out very automatically. In a very mature IT system, workflows can be used to obtain the approval of the application owner to rightsize a specific machine on the basis of automatic evaluations, and the corresponding actions can be scheduled and executed fully automatically in the next planned downtime.
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Are there any pros and cons here regarding manual or automated?
Of course, the fact that the best possible results are always achieved from the cloud outputs 24/7, largely without human interaction, speaks in favor of an automated FinOps practice. On the other hand, this naturally requires a certain investment in order to set up such a highly automated FinOps practice.
Accordingly, the advantages and disadvantages of the more manual approach are found in the opposites of the start with the manual approach requires no or only a small investment. However, employees will periodically or continuously analyze the cloud expenses and plan actions from them.
Personally, I consider the start with the manual approach to be sufficient to get a feeling for the topic, to get into a semi-automated status and then to continuously develop from this to the desired level of automation.
Personas of a FinOps practice
The FinOps Foundation suggests the following personas for a FinOps Practice:
Conclusion
FinOps is an activity that I believe should be implemented quickly or during migration. Advantages of a FinOps Practice are quickly obvious. Starting simply and quickly is recommended in my view in order to develop further from this status.
