Audit case study: 93 cost optimization findings on a single AWS account, $1,300/mo of waste Wanted to share an anonymized case study from a recent audit because the breakdown surprised me. Mid-sized account, multi-region, primary stated region `eu-west-1`. Scanned all regions, came back with **93 findings totaling $1,299 to $1,350 in monthly waste**. The interesting part: **76 of those findings were in `us-east-2`**, not their primary region. The biggest single finding was an Aurora cluster running on standard storage that should have been on I/O-Optimized. For anyone unfamiliar: `Aurora I/O-Optimized` charges ~30% more on the instance hour rate but drops I/O charges to zero. AWS's own breakeven is roughly 25% of your bill spent on I/O. Most production clusters with even moderate write workloads cross that threshold and stay on the default standard config because nobody knows to switch. This one cluster would save **$520/mo** from flipping the setting. The rest of the breakdown.…