FinOps for Data

Optimize cloud data infrastructure costs while maintaining performance

9 min read

FinOps (Financial Operations) brings financial accountability to the variable spending model of cloud data infrastructure. It enables teams to make trade-offs between speed, cost, and quality.

FinOps Principles

Visibility

Understand where money is being spent across data infrastructure

Optimization

Right-size resources and eliminate waste

Accountability

Assign cost ownership to teams and projects

Governance

Establish policies and budgets for data spending

Cost Optimization Areas

Compute

20-40% savings
  • Use spot/preemptible instances
  • Auto-scaling based on demand
  • Right-size cluster configurations

Storage

30-50% savings
  • Implement tiered storage
  • Data lifecycle policies
  • Compression and deduplication

Data Transfer

15-25% savings
  • Minimize cross-region transfers
  • Cache frequently accessed data
  • Batch transfer jobs

Queries

25-35% savings
  • Query optimization
  • Materialized views
  • Partition pruning

FinOps Tools

CloudHealthApptioKubecostCAST AISpot.ioAWS Cost ExplorerAzure Cost Management