How much does AWS at Emory cost?
Cost of AWS at Emory
The cost of an AWS account at Emory is based on Amazon’s 'pay-as-you-go' model, meaning the cost varies based on the services utilized by the account. Emory users benefit from two sets of discounts: the AWS Compute Savings Plan and the Enterprise Discount Plan.
AWS Compute Savings Plan
The AWS Compute Savings Plan applies based on Emory’s commitment to a certain level of compute (EC2 and Lambda) aggregated across the AWS accounts under Emory's AWS primary account. These accounts can achieve significant savings over on-demand compute pricing. The actual discounts are determined by AWS based on several parameters, including the type of EC2 instance and the timing of the use. As of April 2024, the discounts are standardized as follows:
- 35% off Linux EC2 Instance
- 25% off RedHat Linux EC2 Instance
- 20% off Windows EC2 Instance
- 15% off Mac EC2 Instance
These discounts are subject to quarterly review and may be adjusted based on institutional commitments.
Important Note: Users with an AWS credit must deposit the credit code to the Emory primary account to enjoy the EC2 discount. Contact aws.help@emory.edu for instructions.
Enterprise Discount Plan (EDP)
An EDP was signed in September 2020 between Emory and AWS. Under this five-year agreement, Emory has committed to a level of organizational spending across all services in the accounts under Emory’s primary account. This agreement provides users with a fixed 23% discount on S3 Standard / Standard-IA / Intelligent tier and a 6% discount on almost all other services, including EBS, S3 Glacier, RDS, EC2 reserved instance purchases, and more.
AWS Pricing Calculator: This tool helps estimate the costs of services based on usage with the AWS published rate before applying the two sets of discounts. For help with cost estimation, contact aws.help@emory.edu.
Emory-funded Subsidies for GuardDuty and VPC
All AWS at Emory accounts have CloudTrail logging and GuardDuty enabled. These features assist with threat detection, and continuous monitoring and protection of workloads. The Office of Information Technology (OIT) covers 100% of GuardDuty and CloudTrail charges incurred on the account. CloudTrail logs are stored in the primary account and are available upon request to the individual account users. Although typically not necessary, any additional CloudTrail at the account level is the account owner's responsibility.
Account owners may also notice Transit Gateway Attachment and VPC Endpoint charges on their bill for a given month. These charges are for maintaining the networking capability of VPC. OIT will cover 100% of the baseline charges.
Data Egress Waiver
In addition to the cost of using AWS services, Amazon would usually charge a Data Egress fee (Outbound Data Transfer fee) for data moving out of the cloud. This fee is typically waived for all AWS at Emory accounts by AWS and the rebate is applied in Compass in the month following the egress activity.