Summer Replay - That Datadog Will Hunt with Dann Berg
In this Screaming in the Cloud Summer Replay, we revisit our conversation with Dann Berg. At the time, he was a Senior Cloud Analyst at Datadog, but he now provides community support for the FinOps Foundation. Dann and Corey go into the weeds of cost optimization, and each of them bring their respective experiences forward. Dann’s offers his take on multi-cloud and how Datadog is tackling its customer needs there. But the talent doesn’t end there, Dann is also an emerging thinker and influencer in the space, and to boot, an accomplished writer and playwright. Two of his plays have been produced in NYC and China. Check out their conversation!
Show Highlights:
(0:00) Intro
(1:02) Duckbill Group sponsor read
(1:36) Transitioning to Senior Cloud Ops Analyst
(5:12) The composition of Dann's team
(6:54) Cloud cost optimization in the regular business cycle
(10:43) Helping customers understand their cloud bills
(17:42) Paying attention to pricing changes
(21:06) The psychology of cloud economics
(23:20) Working with multiple clouds
(25:02) Duckbill Group sponsor read
(25:46) Spending too much money to save too little money
(31:12) The dangers of relying on third-party tools
(34:01) Pricing woes
(36:25) Where you can find Dann
About Dann Berg
Dann Berg currently works part-time with FinOps after spending more than a decade in the industry. He is also an active member of the larger technical community, hosting the monthly New York City FinOps Meetup, and has been published multiple times in places such as MSNBC, Fox News, NPR, and others. When he’s not saving companies millions of dollars, he’s writing plays, and has had two full-lengh plays produced in New York City and China., Dann is the Director of Community at Vantage. Previously, first FinOps Practitioner at Datadog and FullStory. Host of the NYC FinOps Meetup for almost three years. He also writes plays.
Links:
Datadog: https://www.datadoghq.com
Personal Website: https://dannb.org
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/dannberg/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/dannberg
Monthly newsletter: https://dannb.org/newsletter/
Previous SITC episode with Dann Berg, Episode 51: https://www.lastweekinaws.com/podcast/screaming-in-the-cloud/episode-51-size-of-cloud-bill-not-about-number-of-customers-but-number-of-engineers-you-ve-hired/
Original Episode:
https://www.lastweekinaws.com/podcast/screaming-in-the-cloud/that-datadog-will-hunt-with-dann-berg/
Sponsor:
The Duckbill Group: https://www.duckbillgroup.com/
That Datadog Will Hunt with Dann Berg
About Dann
Dann Berg is a Senior CloudOps Analyst at Datadog, and has nearly a decade of experience working in the cloud and optimizing multi-million dollar budgets. He is also an active member of the larger technical community, hosting the monthly New York City FinOps Meetup, and has been published multiple times in places such as MSNBC, Fox News, NPR, and others. When he’s not saving companies millions of dollars, he’s writing plays, and has had two full-lengh plays produced in New York City and China.
Links:
Datadog: https://www.datadoghq.com
Personal Website: https://dannb.org
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/dannberg/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/dannberg
Monthly newsletter: https://dannb.org/newsletter/
Previous SITC episode with Dann Berg, Episode 51: https://www.lastweekinaws.com/podcast/screaming-in-the-cloud/episode-51-size-of-cloud-bill-not-about-number-of-customers-but-number-of-engineers-you-ve-hired/
Episode 51: Size of Cloud Bill: Not About Number of Customers, but Number of Engineers You've Hired
Years ago, if you wanted to launch an Internet company or Web application, you had to own necessary hardware. Now, the economics have changed drastically with the ease of Cloud computing. It’s still a new industry that people are trying to figure out, especially when it comes to cost and optimization.
Today, we’re talking to Dann Berg, a Cloud ops analyst at Datadog. He helps others understand and lower the cost of Cloud operations. Dann is a detective who is dedicated to figuring out why a company’s Cloud bill is so high.
Some of the highlights of the show include:
Companies struggle with field of Cloud economics; can be overwhelming because there’s so much to learn about products and implementation
Companies use the Cloud to grow quickly, which makes their Cloud costs grow quickly and more than expected
Only access to full list of every resource being used is the Cloud bill; there’s no comprehensive inventory service available
Companies need to offer visibility to Cloud bill; not everyone has access to understand how their actions impact the bill
Cost of Cloud bill is dependant on different factors, including new features, new users, and cost of goods sold (COGS)
Scale and manage bill by using a platform app or hiring a consultant/team
Understand pricing of AWS and learn best practices for cost controls early on
Don’t leave money on the table by focusing on engineering time - not best use of resources; focus on the smallest things that have the biggest impact
Cost is important, but don’t slow down those developing in the Cloud; open lines of communication to create culture to understand cost, value what’s measured
Links:
Dann Berg on Twitter
Datadog
re:Invent
AWS
Cost Explorer
CloudHealth
CloudCheckr
Cloudability
Lambda
EC2
GCP
Azure
CHAOSSEARCH
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