cost-optimization

Billing attacks: CloudFront request floods, Lambda bombs, SQS/SNS OTP spam. July 2026 — WAF ceilings, reserved concurrency, Budgets Actions, FinOps backstops.

Valkey on ElastiCache: about 20% node / 33% serverless cheaper than Redis OSS engines. July 2026 — sessions, rate limits, locks, migration checklist.

A mid-size retailer spiked to $87k in November from three data-transfer traps. July 2026 refresh — CloudFront hit-rate math, Origin Shield pricing, cross-AZ ECS, and Transfer Acceleration misuse.

MAP still offsets dual-run migration cost — if you qualify and tag correctly. July 2026 SMB guide: Assess→Mobilize→Migrate, MAP 2.0 tagging, partner-confirmed ARR tiers (not self-serve credits).

Surprise AWS bills usually come from one of a handful of sources. Cost Explorer patterns, budget alerts, anomaly detection, and the tagging discipline that turns "who owns this $4,000 spike" into a 30-second answer instead of a week-long Slack thread.

Provisioned Concurrency is still the most over-bought Lambda knob. July 2026: INIT billed since Aug 2025, SnapStart runtimes, ~$54/mo illustrative PC baseline math, Power Tuning before you buy warm capacity.

"We'll just have our developers manage AWS" still hides a $635k–$1M DIY ops band for 24/7 coverage. July 2026 TCO: staffing, tooling, GenAI ops, and Support plan choices (Business Support+ / Enterprise).

Beyond Reserved Instances — practical FinOps and AWS cost optimization strategies to reduce your AWS bill by 20-40% without sacrificing performance or reliability.