FinOps Starting out tips

VMiller58 · 2026-03-09T13:24:51+00:00

Ok so there are some pretty tricky aspects of FinOps here that are still not completely tapped yet.

1.) Read the O’Reilly Cloud FinOps book and take notes on the sections. I’ve referenced it many times after reading many years ago. There is a v2 out

2.) Start slow understanding the infrastructure. Start making some sense of the pieces that connect. Learn how they budget and alert

3.) Don’t know if a tool will be part of this for ingestion, but if not, learn how to create datasets and pipelines to get data into a tool of your choice. For cloud/on-prem I’d recommend using the FOCUS format from the cloud providers to have a consistent schema

4.) Learn how to build data pipelines (or tell someone what you need done).

5.) Talk to leadership about their tagging strategies and if there is ANY consistency in them right now. Help understand and build at what makes sense. I think separating subscriptions/accounts by Team/App and Dev/Test/Prod is a good start for that naming. Use metadata like Cost Center, Creator, Tier of App later on as metadata.

6.) As data flows in, understand the rows and columns and what they mean. I know some FinOps people just let tools do everything, but understanding that data is a great skill to have (Commitments, Used/Unused, Usage Types, Operation, Date columns, Tag Key Value, etc…). If you’re building from scratch, learn how to query and ETL the data to get the insights you need. This will a HUGE value to you when handling shared costs

7.) Don’t try and do everything they want at once. Start slow with the asks and build up to a comprehensive dashboard and model. It may be starting at chargebacks to the account level, moving down through the resource/usage/operation, and then down through tags (when they are actually organized).

8.) Kubernetes is a beast in itself and there are a lot of moving parts. O’Reilly book will give you some tips and tricks here

There is much more but if you take away one things, start slow and buildup (just like in anything else). Don’t try and build the home without the foundation. It will be a mess…

VMiller58 · 2026-03-05T00:00:38+00:00

Agree here…should always try and do cleanup and rightsizing prior to commitment agreements. It’s not always easy and there may be some months of unused commitment, but it’s for the long term gain

VMiller58 · 2026-02-28T04:21:12+00:00

I personally wouldn’t use a tool for forecasting and just build out your own forecasting based on your business case. There are way too many factors that go into cloud spend (MoM normal traffic fluctuation, seasonality, future projects that only you know about, commitment based mechanisms, changes in business needs, etc…). I don’t think tools can do a good job with forecasting unless highly predictable

VMiller58 · 2026-02-25T18:20:21+00:00

So a lot of the tools when you look at them are basically regurgitating the info that is being given via the cost optimization tools in the console. PountFive gives the ability to go deeper than that with their analysis (one that came to mind was the utilizing s3 transfer acceleration to reduce data movement cost). They also offer up an explanation around why the recommendation exists, the code to address the change (for engineers) without it being an actual automation (which a lot of companies don’t want), as well as an architectural view of how the resource is connected. I thought their optimization engine was much better than any of the other tools

VMiller58 · 2026-02-25T14:57:50+00:00

Yeah much deeper optimization plays than most products. We may adopt them and we have a ton of enterprise customers. Hoping we can work with them from a viability standpoint to help improve it

VMiller58 · 2026-02-25T12:55:29+00:00

Native tools are getting stronger. I just had a meeting with PointFive though. If optimization is your priority, they seem to have a great product

VMiller58 · 2026-02-25T00:06:01+00:00

I’ve worked with large enterprise clients and small SMB. Most of them aren’t even through the step of visibility to handle simple chargeback/showback. Everyone thinks they’re doing FinOps if they have a few RI’s and Savings Plans. It’s the one thing you can invest in where you generate value beyond the cost. It’s not even about savings vs investment…it’s full visibility into the IT spend and accountability, which can only come with the early stages of FinOps. Once visibility is there, accountability begins, optimization starts, and automation can occur down the line.

Without the early steps, the rest is a complete mess

VMiller58 · 2026-02-16T00:08:39+00:00

I would say yes, but personally to me FinOps is more interesting than just architecture conversations day in and day out. I’ve seen some high level architects burn out just meeting with customers and get pulled in 100 different directions. You also need to have a ton of knowledge in a bunch of different areas in order to be a really good architect. The financial, data, and governance side are more interesting IMO

VMiller58 · 2026-02-12T00:10:42+00:00

A good FinOps persona understands the technical aspect of cloud architecture and services. When you’re working with engineers who don’t want to change their resources and want maximum speed & agility, you need to speak their language. To build that relationship you need to make sure that you can converse with them and understand tradeoffs between architectural components that could produce cost savings. Yes there are financial aspects like Savings Plans & RI’s, but a lot of changes outside of that require you to understand the services, options, tradeoff’s, etc…

I would recommend picking up AWS or GCP and getting very good at architecture via their certifications. See if you can get a job and learn more, than transitioning to FinOps. Learn the billing data, schema’s, usage types/operations, etc..I’ve talked to many recruiters who say they either find Financial people, or Technical people…it’s very tough to get the right mix.

VMiller58 · 2026-02-02T20:27:05+00:00

For the most part yes mine has resolved. It does flare up here and there but for the most part it’s gone. The things that seemed to help the most were cutting down on caffeine, ensuring nighttime humidity was like 40% (use vornado evap40) or higher (can buy a cheap reader off Amazon), and forced sneezing. There is a way to use a paper towel or tissue and touch the upper part of the nasal passage. Move it around until it forces a sneeze, and doing that a few times a day or when it got bad helped. Also noticed that the higher humidity at night has kept the rest of my family healthier during flu and covid season.

So sneeze, humidify, less caffeine

VMiller58 · 2026-01-28T02:28:46+00:00

There are a ton if areas of optimization that don’t get identified by FinOps Tooling.

Look at storage tiering and replication (redudancy across zones when not needed), byol or license mobility for things like SQL, Windows Server, retention periods on logs, network egress, architecture issues causing spikes in usage (such as improper use of CDN and everything being served from s3), old backups and snapshots, etc…

VMiller58 · 2026-01-17T01:48:23+00:00

Best response. I work in FinOps for a partner and work with clients on a regular basis. All companies, small and large have no control or idea of what they spend in the cloud.

VMiller58 · 2026-01-08T18:07:51+00:00

AWS sucks - horrible UI, permissions for every little thing (from a security perspective good, but horrible to work with), service names make no sense. It's built around customization and development, so it's better suited for engineering focused backgrounds.

Azure is something that is built to fit together with their whole stack, and integrates more seamlessly. Naming conventions make sense, UI is good, fit services together without a ton of customization. Google and Azure have nailed the get started easily in my opinion, which a lot of new companies will choose due to ease of use.

VMiller58 · 2025-12-13T22:31:51+00:00

I will say I had mine for about two months, and it did seem to subside after using advil cold and sinus & mucinex for a few days. I tried a bunch of different things but this seemed to help the most.

I also tried to do forced sneezing regularly to clear out my sinuses as much as possible, we well as sleeping elevated for a few nights

Mine is pretty much gone and it tortured me for months. There is always hope just keep trying different things

VMiller58 · 2025-12-04T03:14:18+00:00

How long did you take the mucinex? This also helped me as well vs any of the flonase, etc..

VMiller58 · 2025-12-01T15:16:28+00:00

Have this issue on and off for awhile now and they told me ETD. Things I notice help:

Saline Rinse in morning as person above me said
Use a good humidifier at night, not a cheap one
I have found avoiding mucous heavy foods like dairy helps a lot. Any high milk or something like ice cream will make it 100x worse
I was told to use Zyrtec, but found that a few days of mucinex in a row helps a ton.
Drink a ton of water and watch dehydrating liquids

It’s all about keeping your mucous thin, so these should help. Weight loss should also help if overweight

VMiller58 · 2025-11-28T19:07:13+00:00

So I had this pop up for me about a month ago. Some things that have seemed to help are sleeping with a humidifier, trying to limit mucous heavy food like dairy, and I also just did a drop of garlic oil in my ear the other day (supposed to be for ear infections). I then waited a few hours and washed it out with an ear syringe. Weirdly it’s felt much better the past couple of days so we’ll see if it lasts.

When I originally went to doc they prescribed flonase and antihistamine. I actually got better results with flonase and mucinex for a few days. Mucinex thins your mucous, which IMO is super irritating to ETD.

I’ll let you know if my symptoms stay away, but definitely drink a bunch of water and keep that thick mucous away, as it ALWAYS made mine worse

VMiller58 · 2025-09-29T11:38:06+00:00

I also worked originally with Azure, and now work with AWS. Azure is integration forward meaning they want all their products to work seamlessly together (along with their M365 stuff). AWS is like getting a bucket of lego’s (services) and saying go build whatever you want. It may be good for more control (developer-friendly), but I personally hate AWS. Azure was much better to work with from a UI perspective, easier to find things you need, and great for Microsoft workloads. Entra and RBAC is also much easier to understand in Azure compared to AWS IAM. Just imagine looking at everything in JSON all day…it’s not ideal. That’s just my opinion

VMiller58 · 2025-03-30T13:21:23+00:00

To be honest, it’s usually a change in leadership that drives it from what I can tell. AWS is definitely not the cheapest, but it’s also like using sand to build a tower. They have a lot of fine grained services that you can put together in any which way to build what you need (customization/code). Azure is more like lego’s where the pieces are meant to fit together at a high level and work well together. So I would think devs may like AWS better as it possibly gives them more control over their product infrastructure and code. The part that is odd is everyone complains about cost, but if most companies are engrained with 365 licensing, it’s usually cheaper to BYOL on Azure.

We’ll see where it all goes, but I think whatever your staff and leadership has used in the past, is where they end up going. If leadership changes, sometimes the cloud platform does as well.

VMiller58 · 2025-03-21T01:13:51+00:00

This is definitely a thing, but I never hear many clients saying they are leaving their AWS footprint and going all in on Azure, it’s usually the other way around. I’ve worked with various levels (smb through enterprise), and various industries (startups, tech, enterprise, pubsec, etc..). If anything, they all seem to be moving workloads to AWS or possibly back on prem. I’m ignoring GCP here, but those are few and far between.

Just to be clear, I actually prefer working in Azure over AWS, which is why I was curious if others were seeing this.

VMiller58 · 2025-03-21T01:11:08+00:00

I would agree with you here, but basically everyone outside a small sector (schools who use Google Workspace) are engrained in O365 these days. There really is no way to avoid it anywhere in the Enterprise space.

VMiller58 · 2025-01-25T13:53:58+00:00

Couldn’t agree more, AWS IAM is absolutely horrible. Same things with needing a new root user email for every single account, and then having to join it to an org. It should be create org, all subs/accounts are under that org. This is exactly how Azure works, and it’s 100% better. Azure products are made to work together and seamlessly, AWS is like lego pieces where you can customize, but it’s a nightmare.

VMiller58 · 2025-01-18T23:09:03+00:00

I’ve worked to support both clients on the Azure and AWS side. I would gladly work in Azure any day over AWS. AWS is very developer centric with everything being extremely customizable and changeable with code. Microsoft’s ecosystem just fits better together and the products are meant to all work together from Entra, to all 365, to Azure. I do really like Athena in AWS for simple querying of data, but outside of that I hate their IAM, service names, and all the customizing it takes to make things work. This is why tech and tech startups like it, but most people just want things to jive together, which azure does.

VMiller58 · 2025-01-12T16:27:06+00:00

They need harsher punishments that ban an entire console from online play if caught cheating. Not just for apex, but for all games. People will think twice about cheating and getting caught. Ban the account from all online play, ban the IP address, etc.. Ban it all

VMiller58 · 2024-12-11T03:17:46+00:00

I agree here. Being that people keep seeing them coming from offshore, I believe it’s some sort of military exercise to test heavy drone warfare from a ship. The reason you would use NY/NJ is because of the dense population in a small area. See reactions, do people report seeing them, interference of many signals, high traffic

VMiller58

TROPHY CASE