In the competitive landscape of retail, managing IT costs while maintaining scalability and performance is crucial. This case study explores how CloudGeometry helped a major retailer achieve significant cost savings by transitioning from a VMware-based infrastructure to a Kubernetes environment, with a strong emphasis on leveraging OpenCost to enable real-time cost management. The primary goals of this transition were to optimize resource utilization, reduce operational costs, and enhance financial visibility, ensuring that the IT infrastructure could support business growth without escalating expenses
The Challenge
The retailer's existing VMware environment was increasingly expensive to maintain. As the business expanded, the limitations of the VMware infrastructure became apparent, particularly in terms of cost efficiency and scalability. High licensing fees, coupled with resource inefficiencies such as over-provisioned virtual machines (VMs) and underutilized resources, led to rising operational costs. The need for a more agile, scalable, and cost-effective solution became critical to sustaining the company’s growth and profitability.
The decision to transition to Kubernetes was driven by the desire to control and reduce IT costs while enhancing the ability to scale operations efficiently. However, a key concern was maintaining clear visibility into IT spending during and after the migration. Without detailed, real-time insights into infrastructure costs, it would be challenging to ensure that the expected cost savings were realized.
The Solution
To address these concerns, CloudGeometry implemented OpenCost in the new, containerized, Kubernetes environment. OpenCost is an open-source tool designed to provide granular, real-time visibility into Kubernetes costs, making it an ideal solution for managing and optimizing IT expenses during the transition.
The first step in the transition process was for CloudGeometry to perform a comprehensive analysis of the existing VMware environment. This involved assessing resource utilization, identifying over-provisioned and underutilized VMs, and breaking down operational costs, including software licensing and maintenance. The analysis revealed significant opportunities for cost savings through more efficient resource allocation and the elimination of idle resources.
With these insights, CloudGeometry planned the transition to Kubernetes with a focus on maximizing resource efficiency. Kubernetes’ autoscaling capabilities were leveraged to ensure that resources were only allocated when needed, reducing waste and avoiding the unnecessary costs associated with over-provisioning. However, the real game-changer was the integration of OpenCost, which made it possible the retailer to track and manage costs in real time.
OpenCost provided the retailer with detailed insights into infrastructure spending, breaking down costs by namespace, workload, and department. This level of detail enabled precise tracking of expenses and helped identify specific areas where further cost optimizations could be made. For example, by monitoring real-time costs, the IT team could quickly spot and address inefficiencies, such as workloads that were consuming more resources than necessary.
CloudGeometry also instituted a series of cost thresholds and alerts, both through OpenCost and through native Amazon Web Services Budgets. As a result of these alerts, the retailer was able to take a more proactive (rather than reactive) approach to financial discipline in cloud operations. If costs began to exceed the predefined budget, the IT team was immediately notified, enabling them to take corrective action before the situation escalated. This proactive approach to cost management was critical in ensuring that the transition to Kubernetes remained financially sustainable.
During the pilot phase of the migration, CloudGeometry enabled the retailer to test the effectiveness of OpenCost by migrating a select group of non-critical applications to Kubernetes and closely monitoring the associated costs. The results were encouraging; not only did the transition lead to a reduction in resource usage, but the detailed cost reports generated by OpenCost also confirmed that the projected savings were being realized. This validation was crucial in building confidence among stakeholders and ensuring continued support for the full-scale rollout.
The Benefits
The transition from VMware to Kubernetes, with the integration of OpenCost, enabled CloudGeometry to provide significant cost savings for the retailer. By the end of the migration, the company had reduced its IT operational costs by a substantial margin, largely due to improved resource utilization and the elimination of unnecessary expenses. OpenCost's real-time cost tracking and detailed reporting capabilities were instrumental in achieving these savings, providing the transparency and control needed to manage IT spending effectively.
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