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Cost Management

Every new EC2 instance requires a cost projection before deployment. Use the pricing table below and factor in EBS, Savings Plan discounts, and NAT Gateway data transfer.

Mandatory Cost Projection Rule

Cost projection required for all new EC2 instances

When adding a new EC2 instance via Terraform, you must include a cost projection in the PR/MR description covering: 1. EC2 instance On-Demand monthly rate 2. EBS storage cost (all volumes) 3. Savings Plan projected cost (~47% discount for 3yr No Upfront) 4. Total monthly estimate

EC2 Instance Pricing (us-west-2 On-Demand)

Instance Type vCPU RAM $/month (On-Demand) $/month (Savings Plan ~47% off)
t3.micro 2 1 GB $7.59 ~$4.02
t3.small 2 2 GB $15.18 ~$8.05
t3.medium 2 4 GB $30.37 ~$16.10
t3.large 2 8 GB $60.74 ~$32.19
t3.xlarge 4 16 GB $121.47 ~$64.38
t3.2xlarge 8 32 GB $242.94 ~$128.76

Savings Plan

CWIQ.IO uses a Compute Savings Plan (~47% discount, 3-year No Upfront). New instances automatically benefit from this plan as long as it has available commitment. See terraform-plan/docs/cost/COST_OPTIMIZATION.md for the full analysis.

EBS Storage Pricing (us-west-2)

Volume Type Price
gp3 $0.08/GB-month
gp2 $0.10/GB-month
io1/io2 $0.125/GB-month + IOPS

All new volumes use gp3 by default. EBS volumes are independent of the Savings Plan — storage costs are not discounted.

Common volume cost examples:

Volume Size Monthly Cost (gp3)
20 GB $1.60
50 GB $4.00
100 GB $8.00
250 GB $20.00

Deployed Server Cost Reference

Server Instance Root /data /var/lib/containerd Est. Monthly (On-Demand)
GitLab (shared) t3.xlarge 50 GB 250 GB 100 GB ~$170-180
Nexus t3.large 50 GB 250 GB 100 GB ~$100
Authentik (×2) t3.medium 20 GB — — ~$30 each
Vault t3.small 20 GB — — ~$20
Ansible t3.small 20 GB 50 GB — ~$20
SonarQube t3.large 100 GB 250 GB 100 GB ~$100
DefectDojo t3.medium 50 GB 100 GB 50 GB ~$50
Orchestrator DEV t3.large 30 GB 200 GB 150 GB ~$90
LangFuse t3.large 30 GB 100 GB 50 GB ~$75
Demo t3.medium 30 GB 100 GB 50 GB ~$50
Icinga (shared) t3.small 20 GB 50 GB — ~$20
Prometheus t3.medium 20 GB 200 GB — ~$50
Loki t3.medium 20 GB 200 GB — ~$50
Grafana t3.small 20 GB 20 GB — ~$20

Infrastructure Overhead

Component Monthly Cost
NAT Gateway — Shared-Services (2×, HA) ~$84 (base + transfer)
NAT Gateway — Dev (1×, single) ~$42 (base + transfer)
EKS Control Plane $73 (fixed)
ALB — GitLab ~$20-25
EIP (per NAT Gateway) ~$3.50 each
Route53 hosted zones ~$0.50/zone/month

Default AMI for New Instances

Use AlmaLinux 9 for all new instances

All new EC2 instances must use AlmaLinux 9.7 unless there is a documented reason for a different OS. AlmaLinux 10 has known incompatibilities with SSSD proxy mode.

AMI ID OS Region
ami-02169c46e1cfcd5e7 AlmaLinux 9.7.20251118 x86_64 us-west-2
ami-08952be33a4ff3495 AlmaLinux 10.1.20251124 x86_64 us-west-2 — only if AL10 explicitly required

Copy the AMI ID from an existing module: 

grep ami_id terraform-plan/organization/environments/shared-services/ec2-instances/ansible/variables.tf

Cost Projection Template

When adding a new EC2 instance, include this in your MR description:

## Cost Projection: <service-name>

| Item | Size/Type | Monthly Cost |
|------|-----------|--------------|
| EC2: t3.medium (On-Demand) | — | $30.37 |
| EBS root (gp3) | 30 GB | $2.40 |
| EBS /data (gp3) | 100 GB | $8.00 |
| EBS /var/lib/containerd (gp3) | 50 GB | $4.00 |
| **Total (On-Demand)** | | **$44.77** |
| **Total (Savings Plan ~47% off compute)** | | **~$32** |