Privo IT: A Case-Study

About Privo IT

Privo IT, based in Woburn, Massachusetts, United States, is a managed I.T. service company specializing in Amazon Web Services. They help design and manage AWS environments for customers wanting to migrate their infrastructure to the cloud.

The Challenge

Privo IT was tasked to build a solution for a client that wanted to import temporary data into an RDS database for demonstration purposes. The RDS instance was running Microsoft SQL Server for Web and needed to be a db.r3.xlarge instance type with enough RAM and CPU power to support the types of queries that were being executed.

Since the RDS instance was being used for demonstration purposes, it was only being used during normal business-hours. This meant that it was sitting idle for over 12 hours a day. Ideally, the RDS instance would only be running Monday through Friday, 9:00am to 7:00pm. Running the instance 24 hours a day, 7 days a week was a significant cost waste.

Amazon EC2 instances can be stopped and restarted to save costs. However, Amazon RDS instances do not have this capability. Instead, they can only be snapshotted, terminated, and restored.

Nick Underwood, President of Privo IT, asked us "Do you have a script that will stop and start an RDS instance on demand?"

Nick was looking for a solution that met the following criteria:

  • Reliable: Privo IT needed to ensure the RDS instance was live during normal business-hours.
  • Cost effective: The company needed a solution that was low cost so as not to lose the cost-savings of shutting down the RDS instance.
  • Low Maintenance: They did not want to manage their own scripts or EC2 instances for the purpose of turning the RDS instance on and off.

The Solution

Using Skeddly's "Restore RDS Instance" action, Privo IT was able to restore a fresh RDS instance at 8:30am each morning, Monday through Friday. At 7:30pm, the RDS instance was terminated with a final snapshot created. This final snapshot was used the following morning to restore the next day's fresh RDS instance.

"So easy my 5-year-old could probably have figured it out. Simply plug-in the values you need and schedule."

The Benefits

A db.r3.xlarge RDS instance in N. Virginia (us-east-1) costs $0.88 per hour. For a week, the RDS instance was costing the client $147.84.

By running this instance only during normal business-hours, this instance was instead costing the client $48.40 each week. This resulted in cutting $99.44 (67%) from their weekly RDS costs.

The costs to use Skeddly each week were $0.75. With these savings, Privo IT was achieving a return on investment (ROI) of 13,159%.

"We plan to recommend Skeddly to automate our clients's workloads and schedule backups for clients going forward."

What's Next?

Reduce your own RDS costs by scheduling "off-time" for RDS instances that are not needed 24/7. Sign-up for our 30-day free trial, or sign-in to your Skeddly account to get started today.

Get Started Now!

Start your free 30-day trial. No credit card required.

Start Now