finops-cost-optimization_skill

Overview

This skill helps optimize Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI) costs by identifying hidden billing traps, calculating exact savings from shape migrations, and guiding Universal Credits and budget planning. It focuses on practical actions: cleaning orphaned resources, right-sizing instances, egress strategies, free tier maximization, and reliable cost allocation. Use it to reduce surprise bills and improve ongoing FinOps discipline.

How this skill works

The skill inspects common OCI cost leak sources and prescribes audits, configurations, and migration paths. It provides precise examples and arithmetic for savings (e.g., flex vs fixed shapes, ARM vs AMD, storage tiering), plus concrete detection commands and remediation steps. It also explains Universal Credits categories, commit strategy, and multi-threshold budgeting best practices.

When to use it

• Investigating unexpected OCI bills or monthly anomalies
• Designing cost-aware landing zones and Terraform deployments
• Planning Universal Credits commitments and category sizing
• Right-sizing compute (shape or architecture migration) and storage lifecycle policies
• Setting up budget alerts, showback/chargeback, or monthly cost audits

Best practices

• Use Oracle-maintained landing zone modules to avoid egress and networking anti-patterns
• Audit monthly for orphaned boot volumes, unattached block volumes, reserved IPs, and stale backups
• Set preserve_boot_volume=false or explicitly delete boot volumes when terminating instances
• Commit Universal Credits conservatively (70–80% of baseline) and analyze 3–6 months of usage
• Use ACTUAL budget alerts at multiple thresholds (50, 75, 90, 100%) and treat FORECAST as trend guidance only

Example use cases

• Clean up orphaned boot volumes and reserved public IPs to stop silent monthly charges
• Migrate fixed shapes to flex shapes or AMD→ARM for 40–60% cost reduction per instance
• Implement storage lifecycle policies to archive cold compliance data and save >80% on storage costs
• Evaluate egress strategy: choose FastConnect vs internet egress based on breakeven and monthly TB
• Automate dev/test auto-shutdown and tag-based schedules to cut 60–75% of dev spend