I still remember the look on our CFO’s face — that “we might need to sell a kidney to pay AWS” kind of look.
Our SaaS startup was thriving, but our database costs? Spiraling out of control. Every monthly invoice felt like a small horror story.
So we rolled up our sleeves and got brutally honest with our data. Here’s what happened next.
We discovered the real villains —
🔹 A few missing indexes quietly forcing full-table scans on a 50M+ row monster.
🔹 Dozens of dead indexes eating space and adding zero value.
🔹 Logs so bloated, even queries gasped for air.
We rebuilt smart indexes, archived old logs to S3, and refactored queries so they fetched only what mattered.
And when the dust settled?
⚡ Queries ran up to 5x faster.
⚡ CPU load dropped by 40%.
⚡ Storage costs got sliced in half.
⚡ The overall database bill plunged by 60%.
That month, our finance team didn’t just approve the invoice — they celebrated it. 🎉
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The Real Lesson?
Database optimization isn’t a one-time rescue mission — it’s a culture.
Stay curious about where your data actually lives.
Watch your queries like a hawk.
Keep your indexes lean and meaningful.
And never store yesterday’s noise in today’s space.
Because in the long run, performance and savings come from one thing — discipline.
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💭 When was the last time you looked under the hood of your database?
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A SaaS startup reduced their database costs by 60% through systematic optimization. The team identified missing indexes causing full-table scans on 50M+ row tables, removed unused indexes, archived old logs to S3, and refactored queries. Results included 5x faster queries, 40% lower CPU load, and 50% storage cost reduction. The key takeaway emphasizes database optimization as an ongoing practice requiring regular monitoring of queries, maintaining lean indexes, and proper data lifecycle management.

The Day Our Database Bill Nearly Sank the Company

Only 50M+ rows? Just a baby database :P
Will never move to cloud based for ours, the DB is almost 400GB and is accessed so frequently every second of the day that I shudder to think what Amazon would charge. Not to mention, they don’t entirely support the database we use.
On-Premises will always remain king of the hill I believe, cloud is fun and all, but end of day it’s a fad, it’s why Cloud Repatriation is a thing, not everything should be in the cloud.

we have issue with azure flexible server and checked there is issue in binlog files that are not getting deleted after specific interval . total server storage is 800gb and 300gb bin files. we are getting charged every month for these 300gb. then we slowly created new instance with 400gb and exported all the db dumps then our cost got reduced from 2k/day to 1k/day. always keep eyes on the azure fx server guys