When it comes to cloud assessments, cost-effectiveness is our holy grail. Few factors matter more than minimizing costs and maximizing performance benefits.
This is why cloud cost modeling for high memory-use workloads can be so challenging. In Akasia’s cloud cost models, memory is typically a very large component, if not the largest component, of server cost.
Dynamic random-access memory (DRAM), the current industry standard for memory storage, is incredibly expensive. DRAM costs add up quickly for memory-intensive applications like SAP and large databases.
Intel is driving innovation in memory technology with Optane DC Persistent Memory. Optane’s high memory capacity and low price tag make it a game-changer for memory-intensive workloads.
Optane-Powered VMs on the Cloud
Since the release of Optane DC Persistent Memory in 2019, cloud architects have innovated new memory-optimized VMs backed by this technology.
Today, a growing number of public cloud providers, such as IBM Cloud, incorporate VMs backed by Intel Optane for high memory-use cases.
Memory-optimized VMs with Optane DC Persistent Memory offer higher data density compared to DRAM—up to 4 times more memory per server. They are also significantly faster than existing SSD options. VMs using Intel Optane technology have larger overall memory capacity and smaller costs than VMs with only DRAM. That’s what we at Akasia call cost-effective.
JD Wells, WW Solution Leader IBM Cloud for VMware at IBM says, “Akasia Infrastructure Modeler with its new Intel Optane support empowers customers to model how Optane Memory delivers increased VM density while reducing cost to operate through improved memory cost, and also reduced licensing by optimizing the number of hosts needed to operate todays workloads.”
What This Means for Cloud Cost Modeling
Intel Optane’s ground-breaking memory solutions have significant implications for cloud cost modeling.
Immediately after including support to model costs for servers with Intel Optane, Akasia found:
- Increased VM packing ratios for right-sizing scenarios for cloud-native and VMware-on-Cloud virtual architectures
- Decreased number of virtual hosts required
- Lower TCO for cloud migration projects overall
- More scenarios where moving to the cloud from on-premises environments makes financial sense
The use of Intel Optane technology for storage and memory means clients and partners have more choice than ever before. With increased choices comes increased need for software solutions like Akasia Infrastructure Modeler, which helps businesses make the right choices in terms of which cloud platform to migrate to, and what configuration should be adopted to maximize performance while minimizing costs.
Intel Optane enables VMs to consolidate more memory into each server, resulting in several more possible cloud configurations for the customer and more opportunities for cloud savings.
By including Optane technology in cloud cost modeling, the Akasia Infrastructure Modeler can find more economical options for our clients.
Akasia Infrastructure Modeler
Akasia Infrastructure Modeler provides cost planning for lift-and-shift migrations from one on-premises or cloud environment to another. It discovers on-premise resources and provides equivalent and right-sized cloud templates in minutes. Akasia’s automatically generated reports provide a complete cloud bill of materials and costs that form a starting point for lift and shift migrations.
Akasia makes cloud cost optimization and migration decision-making easy by enabling cost comparisons between:
- All major cloud platforms: AWS, Azure, GCP, IBM Cloud and Oracle Cloud.
- VMware-on-Cloud vs Cloud Native virtualization
- On-Premises vs Cloud
- As-is vs Right-sized infrastructure
- Always-On vs Pause-and-Resume infrastructure
- BYOL vs License Included
Learn more about Akasia Infrastructure Modeler in our comprehensive whitepaper and on our website. Contact us here.
