Guide to Commitment Management FAQ

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Commitment Manager

Commitment Portfolio

What is the difference between units and counts?

Counts refers to the number of instances in a reservation, while Units refers to normalized instance hours. This is relevant for RIs that applied to multiple instance sizes within a family. This also helps you decide on the overall size of an RI, so that a reservation of 5 instances of m4.large (Count of 5, Units of 20) not appear larger than a reservation of instances of 4 m4.16xlarge (Count of 4, Units of 512).

Why does my savings decrease when I look at Adjusted cost?

Custom pricing often shifts the savings from an RI to custom pricing. To use a simple example, if an instance cost $1/hour and the reservation costs $0.80/hour, a fully-utilized reservation of 10 instances would provide $48 of savings per day (10 x 24 x $0.2).

If you have a custom pricing agreement that gives you 10% discount for compute instances, your savings for this would effectively drop to $43.20 per day (10 x 24 x $0.18).

Why does savings/utilization change when I select a view?

The portfolio supports account group based views. However, when you select a view, filter to both where a reservation is owned as well as where a reservation is applied. If your team purchases RIs within a linked account and want to see how much of the RI was consumed by your team, you can do that with a view.

To view RIs owned in a particular account, use the Account filter on the main page.

In Azure reserved instances, does the savings rate percent and savings over term KPIs incorporate custom Azure rates?

If you have custom pricing calibrated in the application, you can also tease your savings net of custom pricing discounts.

My Commitment portfolio is missing commitments, where are they?

Cloudability commitments can only see commitments that the user account can see. Using AWS as an example, a consolidated billing parent account cannot see the activity of the child account that occurred before it entered into the consolidated billing relationship. This means that the parent account cannot see commitments belonging to the child that were purchased before the consolidated billing relationship began.

The suggested workaround is to add an IAM credential for the child account to Cloudability, in addition to the consolidated billing parent account. Cloudability Commitments will then be able to see the commitments that were purchased by the child account. Cloudability will automatically de-duplicate any overlapping data.

Commitment Recommendations

  • The commit value in savings plan is on higher end when compared to RI for EC2. Do you recommend to buy both?

    In Cloudability , It is possible that the commitment amount in a saving plan is higher than the Reserved instance for AWS EC2. The reserved instances provide a discount when you reserve a certain amount of computing power (measured per hour) for a one- or three-year term while savings plans provide a discount when you commit to spending a certain amount (measured in dollars per hour) for a one-or three-year period. The decision to purchase a resource or spend based commitment is up the FinOps leader in the organization. Eligible usage may be covered by multiple commitment types. Currently, we provide these recommendations in a vacuum from one another. For example, it is not recommended that all reserved instances and savings plans for AWS EC2 be purchased.

  • What is the best strategy to use commitments? What are best practices? Are you expecting to consider and act on all the recommendations at once?

    The strategy chosen when using commitment-based discounts to save on cloud spend will vary depending on the organization, vendor, and commitment type. There is no universally best approach. Since commitments usually involve one- or three-year contracts, it is crucial to consider future plans carefully. Generally, it is advisable to make smaller, frequent purchases over time until the desired coverage percentage is achieved. Once this threshold is reached, additional commitments may be purchased as usage grows or as existing commitments expire. It is also important not to renew commitments if a decrease in usage is anticipated.

    In Cloudability's support for commitments, the commitment recommendations provide what commitments should be purchased to maximize net savings, given the selected usage range. Individual recommendations are provided for each permutation of the criteria necessary for each commitment type where coverage usage is detected. In affect, Cloudability Commitment Recommendations provide you the optimal commitment. Organizations should strive to this coverage level to achieve optimal savings, however, as best practices call for small incremental purchases, the optimal recommendation should rarely be acted upon directly.

GCP Specific FAQ

How far back can I go in historical usage for analysis?

A maximum of 2 months: The entire previous months usage, up until the previous day of the current month.

What dimensions can I use to filter the usage for analysis?

You can use any configured Cloudability dimension: Tags & Labels, Account Groups, or Business Mappings. Some dimensions may not be available if the data variability is high – for example: “server name”. Only dimensions with a low-moderate amount of variability will be available, for example: “environment: production/staging”, “cost center: abc123”.

How many dimensions can I use to filter my usage for analysis?

You can select up to 10 Cloudability dimensions to apply to your usage.

When will the selected dimensions be applied to my usage?

Dimensions are applied when the next billing data ingestion occurs. It can take up to a maximum of 24 hrs for the dimensions to be applied to your usage, and be available to be used as filters. When GCP processing starts, it will take the currently configured preferences at that point in time, and apply them.

Can I change my selected dimensions multiple times?

Yes, you can change the dimensions multiple times. When the billing data ingestion occurs, it will take the currently configured dimensions and apply them to the data.

Can different users have different dimensions configured for their usage?

No, the dimensions are configured for the entire organization.

How is the usage on the graphs displayed?

The graphs show hourly data, with multiple hours being averaged into a single point if required to fit into the graph.

How is the default recommendation calculated?

This is the propriety Cloudability algorithm which looks to maximize savings while balancing risk.

Are SUDs incorporated into the recommendation?

Yes, if a resource received a SUD previously, the Cloudability recommendation savings will show the increase from the SUD rate, not the on-demand rate.

The SUD discount level changes throughout a month, what SUD discount level is used?

The average of the entire previous months discount is used and applied to the modelled usage for any resource that received a discount.

How are Cloudability 's recommendations different from the GCP recommendations?

There are 5 features that will result in different results from the native GCP recommendations:

  1. Included data: Cloudability includes any resource running for any amount of time, it does not need to be running consistently for 30 days/1 mont
  2. Usage period: selecting a specific usage period
  3. Filtering the data: Cloudability allows you to remove usage from analysis at a very granular level
  4. SUDs: Cloudability incorporates SUD discounts in the calculations if they were previously received
  5. Risk: Cloudability users can analyze different commitment levels based on risk

How are values in the console rounded ?

Values are rounded to the closest whole number.