How to conduct an AWS architecture benchmark without big financial losses?

Question

Amazon Web Services

Hello. How can you benchmark your entire existing AWS architecture at low cost? Create a template in CloudFormation, deploy, test and delete?
And another question - what about the test environment for developers? Why not deploy a full copy (or many copies for different teams) of production for them? Maybe then a copy with a minimum amount of resources?

Answer 1

well, you create, you launch, you erase, you
pay only for hours while everything is running
for developers, you can keep everything on one small instance, so if we say you need a dozen large ec2, then developers can get one bucks for 40-80

Answer 2

Create a template in CloudFormation, deploy, test and delete?

Yes. The main thing is to make sure that all resources are cleaned up.
This is exactly what you should do - deploy a full copy (or several, if necessary). The only thing that the cheapest t2 instances will most likely suit you for development is to make a configuration in CloudFormation that will allow you to parameterize the power of the instance.
We keep prod, dev, qa, uat environments - all on different AWS accounts.