Engineering Lab
Cloud Cost Challenge
Tune compute, database, storage, CDN, and cache using static estimate pricing — not live cloud APIs.
Al Beltran Engineering Lab
Loading estimator…
How the challenge works
- Sliders use static estimate rates, not live AWS or GCP prices.
- Each challenge has a budget plus latency and reliability gates. Those gates exist so you cannot zero every resource.
Key concepts
Egress and requests
Bytes out and chatty clients often beat instance count on the invoice.
Hot vs cold
Years of logs do not belong on the same storage class as the working set.
Common mistakes
- Deleting the database to win a cost game.
- Ignoring region. Users far from origin pay in latency even when the bill looks fine.
Interview tips
- Say 'order of magnitude' and the unit: per GB, per hour, per million requests.
- Ask who owns egress before you promise a number to finance.
Related challenges
Built by Al Beltran