Elastic Search Service on AWS. OR somewhere else

Question

I've ran into a problem using AWS for hosting an ElasticSearch Instance through their service called "ElasticSearch Service".

I hopefully had this problem fixed, but I almost had to pay $300 this month for using the service an accidentally running multiple ES instances. Stupid me, I didn't read.

So, the idea is to only keep one instance running and at maximum pay a $150 a month.

Now, I'm not a business owner, but I am trying to kick off my own website. Is there no other service out there where I can host an ES service for cheaper? $150 a month is a lot when I get 0 return from the business I'm testing out. Or is AWS ElasticSearch Service the only solution? I would like to avoid hosting the service on a local computer.

Any help would be great, I don't know where else to ask this question.

Answer 1

Wow, 300$, and 150$ charges for testing out stuff in AWS a lot.

AWS elasticsearch is now offered as part of free-tier, under which they are even offering t2.small.elasticsearch instance which is even not available in free-tier EC2 instance.

I've created both t2.small instances and installed my own Elasticsearch in my free-tier account for which I normally pay 20$ a month, as well as I, 've created AWS Elasticsearch service using t2.small.elasticsearch instance which is totally free.

t2.small.elasticsearch can easily satisfy your testing and small size index and moderate traffic. I would strongly suggest to choose this instance type and create a free-tier account if you don't have one to avoid any charges at all.

Tips to avoid cost:

1. Managing the Elasticsearch isn't big deal(you also mentioned you can manage it) and once your business grow and your AWS Elasticsearch usages crosses more than 20$, you should install your own Elasticsearch on Ec2 instance.
2. You can write lambda function which would automatically stop and start instances, use that to start instances only during traffic hour.
3. Use spot instances to avoid the costly reserved instances and choose the regions which offer cheap pricing(even if it's a bit far from your location).
4. Don't over-provision your Elasticsearch node and just use a single node, which can act as both data and master node to save the cost.
5. Choose cheaper storage option ie instead of costly SSD disks, use a cheap magnetic disk.

Apart from these tips please refer to this blog which explains some more concepts in detail but maybe not very useful if you just follow the above 5 steps specific to reducing the cost of Elasticsearch.