Best practices

There are five best practice areas for cost optimization in the cloud:

As with the other pillars, there are tradeoffs to consider. For example, do you want to optimize for video quality or storage and bandwidth costs? In some cases, it’s best to optimize for quality—getting valuable content to viewers in the highest possible resolution—rather than storage and delivery cost. 

Knowing your content value will guide design decisions and help you select reliability targets, content protection schemes, and performance objectives. You can always adjust your focus between the pillar areas, but a shared understanding of the content value will help your organization align on design objectives and make tradeoff decisions. This will ensure that you reach business objectives while controlling spending.

The following section provides techniques and guidance for the Cost-effective resources and Optimizing over time best practice areas for streaming media . Readers interested in the Manage demand and supply resources, expenditure and usage awareness, and Practice Cloud Financial Management areas should refer to the AWS Well-Architected Framework whitepaper for applicable best practices.