TrackIt Blogs

Is there a leak in your ship? It’s time for anomaly detection!

The Need to Identify Unwanted Expenses on AWS

The complexity of AWS, unfortunately, results in the inability for most users to accurately monitor and track their AWS cloud costs. The lack of an effective cloud cost monitoring system open leads to users incurring increments in their costs with no means to identify such unnecessary expenditure.

Small Leaks Sink Big Ships

Unwanted expenses, if unnoticed, could quite possibly be catastrophic for companies using AWS who do not have a designated team that monitors spending on AWS on a regular basis.

This issue highlights the need for a feature like TrackIt Anomaly Detection that allows companies with sizable footprints on AWS to accurately identify and plug such ‘leaks’ in their budget.

Check our white paper and how this feature works so far.

Anomaly Detection – Key Features:

Anomaly Detection provides users with the information to:

• Identify excessive or irregular spending
• Pinpoint changes in resource usage patterns and assess whether they
  were expected or unexpected.
• Be aware and in control of their expenses on AWS without having to check
  their account on a daily basis. Notifications are also sent to users via email
  to inform them of anomalies in their spending patterns.

Why is Anomaly Detection so important ?

Cost Optimization and Rapid Feedback

It goes without saying that the optimization of budgets is one of the key
priorities for most AWS users. Anomaly Detection facilitates this optimization by
aler>ng users and helping them discover anomalies in their spending as early as
possible. Having a feature that automatically identifies anomalies early on
allows users to not only save a lot of time in their monitoring efforts, but it also
allows them to make the changes they need to prevent (or predict) such
anomalies in the future.

Anomaly Recognition and Effective Cost Breakdowns

Sifting through and deciphering the invoices provided by AWS and then try to
draw a correlation between costs and resource usage can be quite a demanding
task. Not to mention that even if you were to recognize the fact that there’s
something irregular in your spending, you’d still need to be able to pinpoint the
cause for this irregularity and figure out the changes you need to make to
prevent unwanted spending in the future.

Fortunately, Anomaly Detection does most of the heavy lifting for users.
Anomalies are automatically recognized and can be identified even by users
with minimal technical expertise. Additional charts, graphs, and other visual
tools provided by TrackIt’s AI then allow the user to dive deeper into the cost
analysis and make the necessary technical changes in AWS.

Accurate Monitoring of Costs for New Resources Launched on
AWS

Anomaly Detection allows you to accurately monitor the evolution of costs
when new resources are launched on AWS. An anomaly occurs as soon as the
new resource is deployed, and this allows users to scrupulously track the
changes in spending during the early stages after deployment.

An Algorithm Borrowed from The Financial Realm:

The algorithm for Anomaly Detection is based on Bollinger Bands, a type of
statistical chart used in the financial industry to provide a relative definition of
high and lows prices of a market. Bollinger Bands serve as an indicator designed
to provide traders with information regarding price volatility. A Bollinger Band is
typically a set of lines plofted two standard deviations (positively and
negatively) away from a simple moving average of a specific security’s price.
The algorithm’s simplicity in terms of implementation and effectiveness in
identifying abrupt changes in prices (or costs) allowed TrackIt’s team to use it to
effectually identify anomalies in spending on AWS.

You can find all our code on https://github.com/trackit/trackit-server. Feel free to share any comments or feedback on the way we are tackling this problem.

About TrackIt

TrackIt, an Amazon Web Services Advanced Consulting Partner based in Marina del Rey, CA, offers a range of cloud management, consulting, and software development solutions. Their expertise includes Modern Software Development, DevOps, Infrastructure-As-Code, Serverless, CI/CD, and Containerization, with a focus on Media & Entertainment workflows, High-Performance Computing environments, and data storage.

TrackIt excels in cutting-edge software design, particularly in the areas of containerization, serverless architectures, and pipeline development. The company’s team of experts can help you design and deploy a custom solution tailored to your specific needs.

In addition to cloud management and modern software development services, TrackIt also provides an open-source AWS cost management tool to help users optimize their costs and resources on the platform. With its innovative approach and expertise, TrackIt is the ideal partner for organizations seeking to maximize the potential of their cloud infrastructure.