May 27, 2016 - through automated analysis of the entire web in real-time. This ... under-utilized CPU and network usage,
CASE STUDY / RECORDED FUTURE
See how one client optimizes and automates their AWS Infrastructure.
Recorded Future. Optimizing AWS Infrastructure by Automating Reserved Instance Modifications “ With CloudHealth, we are continuously running our AWS environment fully optimized. This saves us money, and it saves time we previously spent managing the environment. Now the team can focus on the product, customers, and moving the business forward." –
ULF MANSSON, CHIEF OF OPERATIONS AND CO-FOUNDER
RECORDED FUTURE’S MISSION IS TO EMPOWER THEIR CUSTOMERS WITH REAL-TIME THREAT INTELLIGENCE, to defend their organizations against threats at the speed and scale of the Internet. The company has developed a unique approach that enables security teams to unlock insights on relevant threats through automated analysis of the entire web in real-time. This technology requires significant compute and storage capacity, which Recorded Future provisions in Amazon Web Services (AWS). THE CHALLENGES Almost every component of Recorded Future’s infrastructure uses AWS — which they engineered specifically for the cloud. Knowing that their small team didn’t have the resources to take on such a large challenge within a typical IT infrastructure, they turned to AWS and Amazon EC2. Now the Recorded Future engineers can focus on what they do best — applying their energy and efforts on organizing the Web to predict the future. When AWS introduced Reserved Instance (RI) purchasing options in 2014, Recorded Future began using this feature to help control AWS costs. At first, the company wrote scripts to analyze the RIs and recommend modifications, which then were executed manually. However, this process soon became time- and laborintensive. “Our environment is extremely dynamic,” says Ulf Mansson, Recorded Future's Chief of Operations and Co-Founder. “We have auto scaling policies, we move instances around, we even change databases every year or two. We needed a way to automate the management of RIs, since we didn’t have the time to constantly monitor them.” To help with this task, Recorded Future turned to CloudHealth Technologies for cloud management, monitoring, and automation. continued
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CASE STUDY / RECORDED FUTURE
RESERVED INSTANCES: AN OVERVIEW
Amazon EC2 RIs allow you to reserve Amazon EC2 computing capacity for 1 or 3 years, in exchange for a significant discount compared to On-Demand instance pricing. RIs come in many different permutations with different knobs and dials that can be tweaked based on instance type, payment method, and usage pattern. Since computing needs are continuously evolving, the need to fine-tune instances becomes a day-to-day task. Within a certain criteria, AWS allows you to modify your reservations, but many organizations don’t have time to analyze what changes need to be made to get the full value from their RIs.
“ We needed a way to automate the management of RIs, since we didn’t have the time to constantly monitor them." –
ULF MANSSON,
THE SOLUTION The primary driver for Recorded Future to adopt CloudHealth was to assist with purchasing and modification of hundreds of RIs. One of the first customers to take advantage of this feature when CloudHealth released it in late 2014, Recorded Future found immediate value in the ability to automate RI purchasing, tuning, and allocation. RI modification and analysis is an extremely complex task that many organizations employ full-time resources to manage, something which wasn’t an option for Recorded Future. RI modification isn’t the only feature that Recorded Future takes advantage of in the CloudHealth platform. Recorded Future also uses CloudHealth for tracking resource utilization and rightsizing EC2 instances. Using the CloudHealth Performance and Rightsizing reports, Mansson can quickly see which instances have under-utilized CPU and network usage, helping him make decisions about downsizing instances. Recorded Future also looks at reporting for S3 usage across buckets, and make strategic decisions about where to focus optimization and cleanup efforts. THE RESULTS Even though Recorded Future previously was extremely vigilant about AWS cost control and RI analysis, Mansson sees enormous value from using the CloudHealth platform’s RI Analyzer, Modifier, and Optimizer. Mansson estimates that since deploying CloudHealth, Recorded Future has saved more than 150 employee hours and $75,000, just on RI modifications. In an extremely dynamic cloud environment that is continuously changing and growing, Recorded Future relies on Cloud Service Management tools and automation from CloudHealth to keep their infrastructure under control. “With CloudHealth, we are continuously running our AWS environment fully optimized,” says Mansson. “This saves us money, and it saves time we previously spent managing the environment. Now the team can focus on the product, customers, and moving the business forward.”
CHIEF OF OPERATIONS AND CO-FOUNDER
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