A Catalog of Cost Patterns and Antipatterns for Infrastructure as Code

Cloud adoption is historically driven by cost considerations. As the complexity of the software systems deployed on the cloud continuously increases, and with it also the need to manage larger and more complex infrastructures, Infrastructure as Code (IaC) approaches become invaluable tools. However, not many existing works have looked into the cost implications of IaC use for cloud-based software. In this work we build on an existing dataset that has looked into cost-related commits on IaC artifacts in open-source repositories in order to identify recurring solutions and ineffective practices in cost management. We present a catalog of patterns and antipatterns organizing our findings, and discuss its implication for practitioners and researchers.