which type spends can be considered as Amortized Spend?

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As I understand it, amortization is the process of distributing one-time reservation costs across the billing period impacted by that cost, allowing you to view costs using accrual-based accounting rather than cash-based. For instance, if you pay $365 upfront for a one-year RI and have an instance that uses that RI, the cost is amortized at $1 per day. This concept typically applies to RI/Savings Plans.

My question is: If I have a Neptune cluster running for an extended period, would that be considered as amortized spend? I ask because, in my Cloud Intelligence Dashboard, under "Amortized Spend," I can see my specific Neptune cluster, which has been running for a long time.

asked a month ago33 views
1 Answer
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Your understanding of amortized spend is correct, but there are some important clarifications to make regarding your question about the Neptune cluster.

Amortized spend primarily applies to upfront costs associated with Reserved Instances (RIs) and Savings Plans (SPs), not to regular on-demand usage of services like Amazon Neptune. The presence of your Neptune cluster in the Amortized spend section of your Cost Intelligence dashboard doesn't necessarily mean it's being treated as amortized spend in the same way as RIs or SPs.

What you're likely seeing is the regular, ongoing cost of your Neptune cluster. In AWS cost reporting, the "amortized cost" column often includes both truly amortized costs (like spread-out upfront RI fees) and regular ongoing costs for services. This is done to provide a comprehensive view of your actual daily expenses.

For your Neptune cluster that has been running for a long time, the cost you're seeing is probably just the regular, consistent daily cost of running the cluster. It's not being "amortized" in the same sense as an upfront RI payment would be. Instead, it's simply showing the ongoing cost distributed across the billing period.

To truly have amortized spend for your Neptune cluster, you would need to have purchased Reserved Instances for Neptune or have Savings Plans that apply to Neptune usage. In those cases, any upfront payments would be amortized across the term of the reservation or savings plan.

So, to directly answer your question: No, a long-running Neptune cluster by itself is not considered amortized spend in the traditional sense. The amortization concept primarily applies to upfront costs for RIs and SPs, not to regular on-demand usage of services.
Sources
Understanding your amortized reservation data - AWS Data Exports
Cost and usage dashboard - AWS Data Exports
Building a cost allocation strategy - Best Practices for Tagging AWS Resources

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answered a month ago

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