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Cost of Ownership

Last updated on by mahesh0431

When running a multi-region setup, it's essential to consider the cost implications. Since a separate subaccount is required for the secondary region, most instances from the primary region—such as Integration Suite and Build Work Zone Standard Edition—must be replicated. However, Identity Authentication Service (IAS) is inherently multi-region and does not require duplication.

As a result, maintaining redundancy across regions can double the costs for customers. However, there are ways to optimize expenses, which we’ll explore below.

Optimizing Platform Costs​

The largest expense in a multi-region setup comes from duplicating services across both subaccounts.

At first, you might consider a disaster-triggered activation approach, where you only subscribe to services in the secondary subaccount once the primary region experiences a failure. While cost-effective in theory, this approach carries major risks, including unexpected setup errors and significant time taken for configuration and end-to-end testing before switching regions.

A Smarter Cost Optimization Approach: Active-Active Setup​

Instead of keeping the secondary subaccount idle, a better strategy is to run both regions in an active-active manner. Here’s how this optimizes costs:

  • Dynamic Load Balancing – If the API call quota in the primary region reaches its limit, requests can be automatically routed to the secondary region, ensuring optimal usage of API quotas.
  • Lower Plan Subscriptions – Instead of subscribing to higher-tier plans for each service in a single subaccount, you can distribute the load across both regions, reducing per-service costs.
  • Immediate Failover Readiness – With both regions active, disaster recovery is seamless, avoiding delays in setup and minimizing downtime.

By leveraging active-active architecture, businesses can maintain redundancy without unnecessarily inflating costs, ensuring a cost-efficient, resilient multi-region setup.

Optimizing Maintenance Costs​

In a multi-region setup, optimizing maintenance costs for deploying a secondary subaccount with required services and instances is crucial. Additionally, frequent updates in the primary subaccount necessitate seamless synchronization to ensure consistency across regions.

  • Terraform - Terraform enables automated one-time setup for secondary subaccounts, eliminating the need for manual service replication. A simple script can provision the secondary region with the configured services and instances effortlessly across different landscapes like Dev, QA, PRD.

  • SAP CI/CD & Cloud Transport Management - SAP CI/CD and Cloud Transport Management ensure continuous synchronization between primary and secondary subaccounts. Any updates in the primary subaccount services are automatically reflected in the secondary, minimizing manual intervention and saving both time and costs.