When a developer spins up a virtual machine on AWS, that virtual machine could be purchased using one of several types of cost structures. These cost structures include on-demand instances, spot instances, and reserved instances.

On-demand instances are often the most expensive, because the developer gets reliable VM infrastructure without committing to long-term pricing. Spot instances are cheap, spare compute capacity with lower reliability, that is available across AWS infrastructure. Reserved instances allow a developer to purchase longer term VM contracts for a lower price.

Reserved instances can provide significant savings, but it can be difficult to calculate how much infrastructure to purchase. Aran Khanna is the founder of Reserved.ai, a company that builds cost management tools for AWS. He joins the show to talk about the landscape of cost management, and what he is building with Reserved.ai.