Cloud Cost Optimization, Magento on AWS, How to Save 90% of Your Budget.

When it comes to cloud computing, one of the names that immediately comes to mind is Amazon Web Services (AWS). AWS is undoubtedly one of the most powerful and reliable platforms in the world, capable of offering a wide range of services to support infrastructures of any size and complexity. However, the fundamental question that must be asked is: Is AWS Always the Best Choice?

In this article we will analyze real-world case of an AWS infrastructure used to host a Magento 2 site with around 200.000 monthly visitors. We will dive into the out-of-pocket costs, performance, and how we were able to radically optimize our spend by migrating to a dedicated architecture with cloud replication, while maintaining or even improving performance.

The starting point: €26.000 per year on AWS

As can be seen from the AWS “bill” and from the summary of the living costs for the last 6 months As shown in the image below, the original infrastructure on AWS had a total annual cost of approximately 26.000 €, or beyond 2.300 per month.

This expense represented the sum of the costs for several key services, each with a specific role within the ecosystem. However, the detailed analysis of the costs highlighted how much of the resources were underutilized compared to the real needs of the project, making the investment disproportionate and more than an investment, a mere expense without added value.

Although these services are designed to ensure high performance and scalability, the sum of these costs, as highlighted in the bill, represented a significant burden that did not fully reflect the needs of the project. This discrepancy prompted us to explore alternative solutions that were more efficient and economically sustainable.

The list of services included:

RDS (Relational Database Service): approximately 400 euros/month

RDS is AWS's managed service for relational databases, designed to simplify setup, scale, and management. This service includes automatic backups, security updates, and built-in monitoring. However, using RDS comes with significant costs, especially in scenarios where you need an advanced setup with high availability and replication.

ECS with EC2 (Elastic Compute Service): approximately 900 euros/month

ECS (Elastic Container Service) is AWS's container orchestration service, often paired with EC2 instances to run containerized workloads. In this case, an EC2 instance with 16 vCores was used to handle the traffic of 200.000 monthly visitors. Although it performed well, the cost was high compared to the resources actually leveraged.

ElastiCache: 140 euros/month for cache management

ElastiCache is AWS’s managed in-memory cache management service used to improve application performance. In this case, it was configured to manage user sessions and page cache. While it was an effective solution, the monthly cost of €140 was a critical consideration in the overall analysis.

OpenSearch: 125 euros/month for advanced search

OpenSearch, formerly known as Elasticsearch Service, is a managed service for data search and analytics. Used to provide advanced search functionality on Magento, it was a significant expense for a component that could be replaced with self-hosted alternatives without compromising performance.

Route53, WAF and CloudFront: about 50 euros/month

This combination of services provided:

• Route53: a reliable and scalable DNS
• WAF (Web Application Firewall): protection against common attacks such as SQL injection and cross-site scripting
• CloudFront: Content Delivery Network (CDN) distribution to improve overall loading times

While essential to ensure safety and speed, the combined use entailed additional costs that could be reduced with alternative solutions.

CloudWatch: 30 euros/month for monitoring

CloudWatch is AWS's monitoring service for collecting and analyzing metrics in real time. While useful for diagnosing problems and optimizing performance, it was a significant cost compared to available open-source alternatives.

EFS (Elastic File System): Used for shared storage

EFS is a scalable, fully managed shared file system used to store data shared between multiple instances. However, performance was limited to about 150 MB / s, resulting in a bottleneck in some scenarios, as well as generating high monthly costs.

These inefficient and underperforming services generated significant expense that, for many projects, was not justifiable in terms of results. In addition, many of the services managed by AWS, while simplifying operational management, limited direct control over configurations, making it difficult to optimize the infrastructure for specific needs. Hence, the need for a complete overhaul to reduce costs while maintaining high performance.

The Change: Migration to a Dedicated Architecture and Cloud Replication

After a careful analysis of the customer's needs and the real needs of the application, we decided to migrate the infrastructure to a well-sized and appropriately configured dedicated server with a cloud replication, maintaining a focus on performance and resilience. The result? A drastic reduction in annual costs to approximately 3.000 €, compared to the original 26 thousand euros or less than 10 times the original cost.

Here's how we optimized each component:

1. Databases (RDS vs Percona Server for MySQL 8)

The database is the heart of any web application, especially for complex platforms like Magento 2. Amazon RDS (Relational Database Service) is a managed solution that simplifies the setup and maintenance of relational databases, offering advanced features such as automatic backup, replication, and patch updates. However, its high cost, about 400 per month, can be prohibitive for projects with smaller budgets.

The migration:
To optimize costs without sacrificing functionality, RDS has been replaced with Percona Server for MySQL 8, a highly performing and compatible open-source solution with the same features as RDS.

Implementation:

• The new configuration was built on a dedicated server, ensuring an environment optimized for the specific needs of the customer.
• Automatic backups and replication have been implemented via custom scripts, ensuring complete data protection and flexible management.

The advantages:

• Cost reduction: Adopting Percona Server has completely eliminated the costs associated with RDS.
• Greater control: Self-hosted management allows for more granular control over the database, allowing you to optimize queries and tailor configurations to the actual needs of your application.
• Improved Performance: Thanks to hardware and software optimization, database performance has been significantly increased compared to the previous solution.

With this migration, it was possible to obtain a high-performance, reliable and much more economical database system, demonstrating that open-source solutions and dedicated configurations can compete with managed cloud services without compromise.

2. Processing (ECS with EC2 vs Dedicated Server)

Amazon ECS (Elastic Container Service) is a Docker container orchestration platform used to run, stop, and manage containers in a cluster. ECS is typically combined with EC2 (Elastic Compute Cloud) instances, which provide the compute power needed. In this case, an EC2 instance was used with 16vCore to support the workload of the Magento 2 site. However, the monthly cost of approximately 900 € it turned out to be excessive compared to the ratio between resources provided and actual needs.

The migration:
To reduce costs and increase performance, the ECS/EC2 infrastructure has been replaced with a dedicated server with 48 cores and 96 threads, at the cost of only 199 euro / month.

Implementation:

• The dedicated server was configured to host containers in a virtualized environment, ensuring flexibility and scalability.
• Hypervisors were used to isolate core services, maintaining a clear separation between applications and system processes.
• Container distribution has been optimized to take full advantage of hardware resources, allowing for a significant increase in available compute capabilities.

The advantages:

• Increase resources: With the new server, the available resources have been tripled, going from 16 vCores to 48 physical cores e 96 thread, a significant improvement for managing intensive workloads.
• Cost reduction: The monthly cost has been reduced to less than a quarter of the previous solution, generating significant savings.
• Greater control: Migrating to a dedicated server allowed for more direct and customized management of resources, without the limitations imposed by the ECS managed environment.
• Operational flexibility: The virtualized environment allows you to quickly adapt to new needs, while ensuring isolation and security.

With this strategy, it was possible to dramatically improve performance and reduce costs, demonstrating that self-hosted and well-optimized solutions can compete with cloud offerings, even for demanding workloads.

3. Caching (ElastiCache vs Redis.io)

Amazon ElastiCache is the managed AWS service designed to simplify the implementation of in-memory caches, using technologies such as Redis or Memcached. Caching is essential to improve the performance of web applications, reducing the load on the database and speeding up response times. In this specific case, the ElastiCache service was used to manage the cache of user sessions and pages, with a monthly cost of approximately 140 €.

The migration:
To reduce costs while maintaining the same functionality, ElastiCache has been replaced with Redis.io, a robust and widely adopted open-source system that offers high performance at no cost.

Implementation:

• Redis was installed and configured on a dedicated instance to ensure optimal performance and resource isolation.
• Custom settings were applied to adapt Redis to the specific needs of the project, such as efficient management of user sessions and caching of dynamic pages.
• Continuous monitoring has been implemented to ensure service stability and identify any bottlenecks.

The advantages:

• Cost reduction: Adopting Redis.io completely eliminated the monthly cost of ElastiCache, resulting in immediate savings.
• Performance improvement: The use of dedicated hardware and custom configurations allowed us to optimize cache response times, reducing request latency.
• Greater flexibility: Redis, being self-hosted, offers full control over settings and scalability, adapting better to the needs of the infrastructure.
• Reliability: Redis.io is known for its stability and support for advanced features such as data persistence and master-slave replication.

This migration has demonstrated that an open-source, self-hosted solution can offer the same functionality as a managed service, while reducing costs and ensuring excellent performance.

4. Search (OpenSearch vs ElasticSearch)

Amazon OpenSearch (formerly Elasticsearch Service) is a managed service that makes it easy to manage and use Elasticsearch, one of the world's most popular search and analytics engines. This service is often used to implement advanced search and data analytics capabilities. In this case, OpenSearch had a monthly cost of 125 €, resulting in a significant economic burden for the project.

The migration:
To reduce costs without sacrificing advanced features, OpenSearch has been replaced with ElasticSearch, a free, open-source solution that offers the same indexing and search capabilities.

Implementation:

• ElasticSearch was installed on a dedicated server to ensure maximum performance and full control over the infrastructure.
• Specific optimizations have been applied to improve the efficiency of search queries and data indexing, reducing response times.
• An integration has been developed via Custom APIs, enabling seamless communication between ElasticSearch and the rest of the application infrastructure.

The advantages:

• Cost reduction: Using the open-source version of ElasticSearch completely eliminated the monthly cost associated with OpenSearch, generating immediate savings.
• Performance improvement: Thanks to customized configurations and a dedicated environment, query response times were significantly reduced.
• Greater flexibility: Self-hosted ElasticSearch offers full control over configurations, allowing for better adaptability to specific project needs.
• Compatibility: Integration via custom APIs ensured a seamless transition and improved the efficiency of the overall infrastructure.

Migrating to ElasticSearch has allowed us to obtain an equally powerful but cheaper and more customizable solution, demonstrating once again the value of open-source solutions for highly complex projects.

5. DNS, CDN and Security (Route53, WAF and CloudFront vs Cloudflare Pro)

AWS offers a series of services dedicated to DNS (Route53), web security (WAF – Web Application Firewall) and content distribution via CDN (CloudFront). These services work with a Pay-per-use pricing, where costs vary based on actual usage, such as the number of requests, bandwidth consumed, and configured security rules. While this flexibility is useful for environments with variable loads, it can lead to unpredictable and difficult to control costs.

The migration:
To achieve greater cost predictability and reduce overall spending, the AWS infrastructure was replaced with Cloudflare Pro, which uses a model of flat rate at a fixed cost of 25 per month, regardless of traffic or requests processed.

Implementation:

• Anycast DNS: Cloudflare uses a globally distributed DNS architecture, ensuring fast resolution times and high resilience, including native protection against DDoS attacks.
• DDoS Protection: Cloudflare Pro offers advanced DDoS protection included in the plan, without the additional costs based on attack intensity like you might experience on AWS.
• Image Optimization and WebP Support: The service offers automatic optimizations to reduce image size and improve loading times, with native conversion to WebP format to further reduce bandwidth.
• Global CDN: Cloudflare's content delivery network speeds up page loading anywhere in the world, including advanced features like caching and dynamic content serving.
• Customizable security rules: Cloudflare lets you configure advanced security rules to protect your applications and servers, making it easier to set up than AWS WAF.

Differences in approach:

• AWS (pay-as-you-go pricing): The AWS model is based on variable pricing, tied to the number of DNS requests, the amount of traffic handled by the CDN, and the rules applied by the WAF. Although flexible, this approach can lead to high costs that are difficult to estimate in advance, especially in the case of unexpected traffic spikes or attacks.
• Cloudflare Pro (flat fee): Cloudflare uses a fixed pricing model, allowing you to accurately plan your operating costs regardless of traffic volume, providing protection and optimization without surprises.

The advantages:

• Predictable and reduced costs: Cloudflare Pro has halved the monthly costs compared to AWS services, bringing them from 50 euros to 25 euros per month with a fixed and predictable rate.
• High performance: Thanks to Anycast DNS and a global CDN network, page loading and DNS resolution times have been improved, with high availability guaranteed.
• Operational simplicity: Cloudflare integrates DNS, CDN, and DDoS protection into a single platform, reducing management complexity and interoperability between separate services.
• Greater security: Included DDoS protection and simplified security rules management make Cloudflare Pro a robust and reliable solution.

This migration has highlighted how a flat pricing model, such as the one offered by Cloudflare Pro, can be more advantageous than the pay-as-you-go model of AWS, while ensuring high performance and a simplified infrastructure.

6. Monitoring (CloudWatch vs Netdata and CheckMK)

Amazon CloudWatch is AWS's managed service for monitoring cloud resources and applications, offering metrics collection, logs, and alerts. This service has a monthly cost that varies based on the number of metrics monitored, API requests, and the amount of data recorded, and in this specific case generated a cost of approximately 30 per month. While effective, CloudWatch has some limitations in terms of customization and scalability for on-premises or hybrid environments.

The migration:
To achieve more granular monitoring and reduce costs, CloudWatch has been replaced with netdata e CheckMK, two open-source solutions that offer advanced features without licensing costs.

Implementation:

• Net data:
  • Installed for real-time monitoring of system metrics, such as CPU, RAM, disk usage, and network.
  • It provides a detailed and interactive dashboard, allowing for quick performance analysis.
• CheckMK:
  • Used for proactive monitoring of services, applications, and distributed infrastructure.
  • Configured to collect data from multiple hosts and generate alerts on critical metrics, such as resource utilization and service availability.
• Integration and alerts:
  • Both tools have been integrated into a single management platform, with customized alerts sent via email or webhooks to quickly respond to unexpected events.

The advantages:

• Cost Elimination: The adoption of Netdata and CheckMK has completely eliminated monitoring costs, eliminating the monthly expense of 30 euros for CloudWatch.
• More detailed monitoring: Thanks to the granularity provided by Netdata and CheckMK, it was possible to collect more in-depth metrics, improving the ability to diagnose and optimize performance.
• Customization: Customized alerts and the ability to tailor configurations to specific project requirements made the system more responsive and versatile than CloudWatch.
• Scalability: The open-source solutions used easily adapt to on-premise, hybrid or cloud infrastructures, without restrictions tied to a specific provider.

This migration has demonstrated that open-source tools like Netdata and CheckMK can effectively replace managed services like CloudWatch, improving monitoring and ensuring greater operational flexibility at zero cost.

7. Storage (EFS vs ZFS)

Amazon Elastic File System (EFS) is a fully managed, scalable shared storage service that is ideal for applications that require simultaneous access to data from multiple instances. However, EFS is cost-effective and, in this case, limited data transfer speeds to approximately 150 MB / s, resulting in a bottleneck for I/O-intensive applications.

The migration:
EFS has been replaced with a local configuration based on ZFS in OpenZFS mode su Alma Linux 9, implementing a RAIDZ1 system on three drives 3,84TB Gen XNUMX NVMe SSD each. Additionally, advanced ZFS snapshot and remote backup capabilities have been added to ensure resiliency and business continuity.

Implementation:

• 4th Gen NVMe SSD Drive:
  • Three high-performance SSD drives with a total capacity of 11,52 TB (actually usable about 7,68 TB with RAIDZ1).
  • Optimized read and write speed for applications requiring fast data access.
• RAIDZ1:
  • Implementation of RAIDZ1 to ensure fault tolerance with the loss of a single disk, maintaining high performance.
  • Built-in redundancy, protecting data in the event of hardware failure.
• OpenZFS on AlmaLinux 9:
  • Configure your ZFS filesystem to take advantage of advanced features such as automatic compression, intelligent caching, and snapshots.
  • Optimized for specific workloads, such as high-intensity sequential reads and writes.
• Frequent Snapshots:
  • Implementing ZFS Snapshots 15 every minute to create frequent restore points, useful for protecting data from human error or corruption.
  • Snapshots are kept both locally and transferred remotely.
• Remote replication:
  • Use of ZFS SEND e ZFS RECEIVE to replicate snapshots on a Remote Cloud SAN, ensuring a secure and geographic copy of the data.
  • This configuration provides additional protection in the event of a local disaster, allowing for rapid data recovery.

The advantages:

• Outstanding performance: The new configuration resulted in data transfer speeds of up to 5800 MB / s, a dramatic improvement over EFS's 150 MB/s.
• Zero costs: Local storage completely eliminated monthly EFS costs, generating significant savings.
• Advanced Reliability: RAIDZ1 protects data from hardware failure, while frequent snapshots and remote replication ensure high resilience against data loss or disaster.
• Operational flexibility: Using OpenZFS allows for complete control over configurations, offering features such as schedulable snapshots and near-real-time remote replication.
• Quick Recovery: ZFS snapshots allow you to recover data in minutes in the event of errors or corruption, both locally and from a remote copy.
• Scalability: The configuration is easily expandable, both locally by adding new disks, and in the cloud by increasing the space of the remote SAN.

This solution transformed storage infrastructure, delivering superior performance, advanced security, and unprecedented flexibility, proving that a well-designed configuration can far exceed the capabilities of managed services at a fraction of the cost.

RPO and RTO: Disaster Recovery with ZFS Snapshots, Incremental Backups and Automation

A crucial element of the new design was the implementation of a system of advanced disaster recovery, based on frequent snapshots, incremental backups and automation. This approach ensures complete data protection and rapid recovery in the event of a failure or disaster, minimizing data loss and downtime.

RPO (Recovery Point Objective): 15 minutes

Thanks to the use of ZFS snapshots configured to run every 15 minutes, both on system files and on the database, it is possible to maintain an extremely low RPO. Snapshots are replicated on a Remote SAN means ZFS SEND e ZFS RECEIVE, ensuring a geographical copy of the data that is always up-to-date.

Advanced incremental backups

As an additional precaution, the system provides:

• Backing up files with Borg Backup and Restic:
  • Two incremental backups per day are saved on two geographically separate SANs, configured in RAID 6 to ensure high fault tolerance.
  • The combined use of Borg Backup and Restic allows you to take advantage of advanced compression and deduplication, minimizing space occupied and backup times.
• Database backup with Percona Xtrabackup:
  • The database is incrementally backed up twice a day using Percona Xtrabackup in the format xbstream compressed Zstandard, which ensures execution speed and reduced storage space.
  • Backups are synchronized with geographic SANs, ensuring safe and available copies when needed.

RTO (Recovery Time Objective): 60 minutes

Un Ansible playbook It has been implemented to automate the recovery of the entire infrastructure in the event of a disaster. This automation allows you to:

• Recreate the complete environment (servers, configurations, services) on new resources in less than an hour.
• Recover the latest data from ZFS snapshots or incremental backups as needed.
• Restore application operation with minimal data loss (maximum 15 minutes, in line with RPO).

Advantages of Disaster Recovery System

• Full redundancy: Frequent snapshots and incremental backups distributed across multiple geographic SANs ensure that your data is always protected.
• Quick Recovery: Thanks to automation with Ansible, recovery is fast and free of manual errors.
• Flexibility: The combination of ZFS, Borg Backup, Restic and Percona Xtrabackup allows you to cover every scenario, from individual file recovery to complete environment recovery.
• Resilience: RAID 6 on geographic SANs adds an additional layer of protection against multiple hardware failures.

This configuration ensures proactive and resilient disaster recovery management, minimizing both recovery times and data loss, and ensuring business continuity even in emergency scenarios.

Thoughts on AWS and Perceived Value

AWS is unquestionably one of the best networks in the world. It offers a wide range of services, instant scalability, and unmatched reliability, often making it the preferred choice for large companies or projects with unlimited budgets. However, is it always the best choice?

The Real Cost of AWS

When considering AWS, it is important to distinguish between the Living costs of the services and management costs associates. In the case analyzed, the infrastructure on AWS had a cost of EUR 26.000 per year, but this figure represented only a part of the total.

• Proportional management costs: The old vendor added management fees based on the overall value of your AWS spend. These fees, often calculated as a significant percentage of your total, could easily add 20-30% to your overall cost.
• Total annual cost: As a result, the 26.000 euros of annual running costs on AWS were added to a significant management expense, bringing the total to much higher figures.

With migration to a dedicated infrastructure and complete management "keys in hand", operating costs have dropped by more than 70%, guaranteeing the customer not only immediate savings, but also a personalized service optimized for their needs. This has demonstrated that an autonomous and well-designed management can reduce costs without compromising the quality of the service.

Brand prestige and customer perception

One of the reasons why AWS, like Google Cloud or Azure, is often chosen is the perception of prestige and reliability associated with the brand. Many end customers see these platforms as synonymous with quality and security, thus justifying the high costs. However, this perception does not always reflect a real understanding of the technical and operational needs of the application.

Cloud Architect vs System Administrator

The role of a Cloud Architect is often perceived as a high-level role, associated with advanced skills and sophisticated work. However, in practice, the work of a Cloud Architect can be reduced to configuring instances, services and rules through graphical interfaces provided by platforms such as AWS, Google Cloud or Azure. This approach, although useful for simplifying management, does not always add significant value in addition to the choice of the platform itself.

Un expert system administrator, on the contrary, stands out for its ability to go beyond the limitations of managed platforms, offering more flexible, customized and, often, cheaper solutions.

The strengths of an expert systems engineer

1. Replicate the same functionality on alternative infrastructures:
   • A systems engineer has in-depth skills that allow him to replicate features such as high availability, load balancing, dynamic scaling and security on alternative infrastructures, often self-hosted or with cheaper providers.
   • This allows you to achieve the same functional results without the high costs of managed platforms, while maintaining complete control over every aspect of the infrastructure.
2. Customize the architecture to fit your customer's needs:
   • While managed cloud platforms offer standardized and pre-configured solutions, a systems engineer can design and implement an architecture , optimized for the specific performance, load and safety requirements of the project.
   • For example, you can choose open-source technologies or specific configurations to improve database performance, optimize storage management, or implement advanced caching solutions.
3. Delivering superior performance at lower costs:
   • By eliminating the brand burden and pay-per-use costs of cloud platforms, a systems engineer can design solutions that deliver superior performance at a fraction of the cost.
   • With a dedicated configuration, hardware resources can be sized exactly to the needs of the project, avoiding waste or unnecessary costs related to overcapacity.

The fundamental difference: knowledge vs. dependence

A Cloud Architect who works exclusively on managed platforms often develops a dependence on the tools provided by the platform itself, limiting its ability to operate outside of that environment. This can be problematic when you need to reduce costs or adapt to situations where your chosen platform is not available or ideal.

The system administrator, on the other hand, develops a deep knowledge of the underlying technologies, which allows it to:

• Directly manage server, database and network configurations, without the need for graphical interfaces.
• Choose the best technologies and strategies, regardless of the provider.
• Implement flexible solutions, replicable on any infrastructure, both on-premise and in the cloud.

A holistic approach to infrastructure

An expert system engineer does not limit himself to the initial design and configuration, but offers a comprehensive approach holistic to the infrastructure:

• Continuous optimization: Continuously monitor and improve performance, reducing bottlenecks and implementing technology updates when necessary.
• Proactive management: Implement solutions for failure prevention and disaster recovery management, such as frequent snapshots, remote replication, and incremental backups.
• Reduction of operating costs: Identify opportunities to reduce costs without sacrificing service quality, such as through the adoption of open-source technologies or custom configurations.

A small concrete example

Consider database management. A Cloud Architect might simply configure an RDS database on AWS, choosing the options available through the interface. A systems engineer, on the other hand, might:

• Choose an open-source database like Percona Server for MySQL.
• Manually configure replication, backups, and query optimizations.
• Ensure better performance and reduced costs by completely eliminating RDS expenses.

The real value for the customer

Thanks to this combination of technical skills and flexibility, the system engineer is able to offer:

• A superior cost-performance ratio.
• Greater independence from a single provider.
• A customized and “turnkey” management of the entire infrastructure.

In a world where perceived value often exceeds real value, the systems engineer represents a figure capable of bringing the focus back to efficiency, optimization and savings, without sacrificing the quality of the service.

The quality of the network

Another common objection is that alternative providers like Hetzner or OVH do not have the same network quality as AWS. While it is true that AWS offers a world-leading network, practical experience shows that significant downtime is extremely rare even with cheaper providers.

• Practical example: This year, Hetzner has recorded less than an hour of total downtime, a figure that many customers can easily accept considering the savings achieved.
• Critical Question: It's worth spending 19.000 euro more per year to eliminate that one hour of downtime? For most projects, the answer is no.

The new approach: savings and control

By migrating to a dedicated infrastructure, not only were the out-of-pocket costs drastically reduced, but the customer also benefited from:

• Predictable costs: Eliminating pay-per-use billing has allowed us to accurately budget without surprises.
• Centralized management: A “turnkey” service has simplified operations and reduced management costs.
• Greater control: The ability to optimize every aspect of the infrastructure ensured superior performance compared to the configuration on AWS.

This experience has shown that AWS is not always the ideal choice, especially when cost is a critical factor. With careful analysis of needs and expert self-management, it is possible to achieve the same or better results, with significantly lower overall costs.

Conclusions

AWS represents one of the most advanced and reliable platforms in the world, capable of meeting the needs of the most complex and scalable projects. However, it is not always the most convenient or suitable choice, especially when budget is a critical factor or technical needs can be met with cheaper, more flexible alternatives.

Experience shows that equal, if not superior, performance can be achieved with custom configurations on Dedicated Servers or cheaper cloud providers. This approach not only dramatically reduces out-of-pocket costs, but also allows for greater customization and optimization of the infrastructure, tailoring it precisely to the needs of the project.

Reducing costs is not just a matter of money. It is an opportunity to:

• Optimize resources: Eliminating waste and unnecessary overheads often imposed by managed platforms.
• Improve control: Thanks to the possibility of choosing and configuring open-source technologies and self-hosted solutions, guaranteeing independence and operational flexibility.
• Creating sustainable infrastructure: Design environments that not only reduce costs in the short term, but are also easily scalable and manageable in the long term.

An invitation to conscious evaluation

The prestige of a brand like AWS should not automatically guide the choice of platform. Each project has unique needs that require careful and personalized analysis. The choice of technology should be based on practical criteria: cost, performance, scalability and control, rather than on a perception of reliability associated with the name of the provider.

The real difference is in the design

The ability to achieve high performance at low cost does not reside in the platform chosen, but in the skill with which the infrastructure is designed and managed. A well-designed configuration, supported by open-source tools and deep operational experience, can far outperform the pre-packaged solutions offered by the most popular cloud platforms.

Definitely, the success of a project is not measured by the provider used, but by the efficiency, sustainability and control that the infrastructure is able to offer. Focusing on flexible solutions and expert management allows you to achieve ambitious goals without compromising your budget or service quality.