Cost Policies
Note:Click the link in the Policy Name column to access the corresponding policy template.
Increase cost visibility and management in your multi-cloud world and take appropriate actions to run an efficient infrastructure.
Policy Name |
Description |
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Scans all S3 buckets in the given account and checks if the bucket exceeds a specified byte size. |
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Gathers AWS CloudWatch CPU and Burst Credit data for instances on 30 day intervals. |
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Reports and remediates any Classic Load Balancers (CLB) that are not currently in use. |
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Sends email notifications before AWS Reserved Instances expire. |
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Check for instances that are idle for the last 30 days and terminates them after approval. |
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Checks for inefficient instance utilization using provided CPU and Memory thresholds. Instances matching the criteria can be resized after user approval. |
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Checks for object store items for last modified date and moves the object to cool or cold archive tiers after user approval. |
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Checks for snapshots older than specified number of days and, optionally, deletes them. |
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Collects all RDS instances in an account. |
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Sends email notifications when AWS RI Recommendations are identified. Note:These RI Purchase Recommendations are generated by AWS. |
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Sends email notifications when utilization falls below a threshold. |
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Checks for Inefficient database services that are inside or outside the CPU threshold for the last 30 days and resizes them after approval. |
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Sends email notifications when AWS Savings Plan Recommendations are identified. Note:These Recommendations are generated by AWS. |
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Monitoring your Savings Plans is an important part of Cloud Financial Management, as tracking the utilization of Savings Plans will inform you of wasted commitments and help you distribute your savings more effectively. This policy is built on AWS Savings Plan utilization metrics, which shows you the percentage of your Savings Plans commitment you are using across your On-Demand usage. Applying this policy requires you to select a lookback period (number of days of past usage to analyze), the Amazon Resource Name (ARN) of the Savings Plan to analyze, and a Utilization threshold to alert on if below the threshold. |
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Allows you to schedule start and stop times for your instance, along with the option to terminate instances, update and delete schedules. |
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Checks AWS for unused IP Addresses and deletes them. |
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Checks for database services that have no connections and delete them after approval. |
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Checks for unused volumes and if no read/write operations performed within a specified number of days and, optionally, deletes them. |
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Checks Azure Blob Storage for last modified date and moves the object to the Cool or Archive tier after user approval. |
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Sends email notifications when an Azure Reserved Instance are about to expire. |
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Identifies Linux instances eligible for Azure Hybrid Use Benefit. |
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Identifies SQL instances eligible for Azure Hybrid Use Benefit. |
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Identifies instances eligible for Azure Hybrid Use Benefit. |
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Checks for instances that are idle for the last 30 days and terminates them after approval. |
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Checks for inefficient instance utilization using provided CPU and Memory thresholds. Instances matching the criteria can be resized after user approval. |
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Sends email notifications when Azure RI Recommendations are identified for MCA customers. Note:These RI Purchase Recommendations are generated by Microsoft Azure. |
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Checks for snapshots older than specified number of days and, optionally, deletes them. |
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Sends email notifications when Azure RI Recommendations are identified. Note:These RI Purchase Recommendations are generated by Microsoft Azure. |
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Sends email notifications when utilization falls below a threshold. |
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Checks for Inefficient Azure SQL single database services that are inside or outside the CPU threshold for the last 30 days and resizes them after approval. |
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Sends email notifications when it finds Azure Savings Plan Recommendations for which the net savings exceed a threshold set in the policy. |
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A key metric when managing Commitments in the cloud is savings realized from purchasing and using reservations. This allows you to understand the effectiveness of your savings strategy. Flexera One’s Azure Savings Realized from Reservations policy will help you to identify trends in your savings from Compute commitments, and importantly tie this back to total Compute spend as a percentage. Applying this policy only requires a start date, end date, and specific billing centers for the period you wish to view your savings realized for, as well as the chart type to view the data by. |
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Allows you to schedule start and stop times for your instance, along with the option to terminate instances, update and delete schedules. |
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Checks for unused IP addresses in the given account and, optionally deletes them. |
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Checks for database services that have no connections and decommissions them after approval. |
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Checks for unused volumes older than specified number of days and, optionally, deletes them. |
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Note:This policy has been deprecated. It is superseded by the Cloud Cost Anomaly Alerts policy. Analyzes all Billing Centers for a specified number of days and raises an incident if the percentage of spend (compared to the previous period of the same number of days) has surpassed the defined threshold. |
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Creates a Monthly Budget Alert for a Billing Center or for the entire Organization. |
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Creates a Monthly Budget Alert for a Cloud Vendor Account. |
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Specifies which regions have cheaper alternatives by specifying the expensive region name and the cheaper region name for analysis. |
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Analyzes the spend of an organization over a specified time period. Cost anomalies are identified using Bollinger Bands. If the spend is outside the Bollinger Bands settings, then an incident will be raised. |
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Predicting what you may spend on cloud is a challenging task given the variable nature of cloud consumption and the effects of optimization activities such as Reservations and Rightsizing. Our Cloud Spend Forecast policies provide several ways to gain some insight into what your future spend may look like. The following policies can be applied:
This policy uses the Moving Average method to forecast your spend. You can choose to forecast at the Billing Center or entire Organization level, specify how many months of historical data should be considered, and specify how many months should be forecasted. |
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Cloud Spend Forecast - Straight-Line (Linear Regression Model) |
Cloud Spend Forecast policies provide a number of ways to gain some insight into what your future spend may look like. The following policies can be applied:
This policy uses the Straight-Line method using a Linear Regression model which uses a more sophisticated calculation than the Simple model to forecast your spend. You can choose to forecast at the Billing Center or entire Organization level, specify how many months of historical data should be considered, and specify how many months should be forecasted. In addition, you can choose to breakdown forecasted costs by the following dimensions: category, region, service, and vendor account (for example, AWS account, Azure subscription, and so on). |
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Predicting what you may spend on cloud is a challenging task given the variable nature of cloud consumption and the effects of optimization activities such as Reservations and Rightsizing. Our Cloud Spend Forecast policies provide a number of ways to gain some insight into what your future spend may look like. The following policies can be applied:
This policy uses the Straight-Line method using a Simple model which uses a more basic calculation than the Linear Regression model to forecast your spend. You can choose to forecast at the Billing Center or entire Organization level, specify how many months of historical data should be considered, and specify how many months should be forecasted. In addition, you can choose to breakdown forecasted costs by the following dimensions: category, region, service, and vendor account (for example, AWS account, Azure subscription, and so on). |
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Sends email and requests deletion when snapshots older then a certain timeframe are found. |
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Downsizes instances. |
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Finds Idle Cloud SQL Instance Recommendations and reports when it finds them. You can then delete the idle volumes. |
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Sends email notifications for all Google CUDs. |
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Finds Google Committed Use Discount Recommendations and reports when it finds them. |
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Sends email notifications when Google CUDs are about to expire. |
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Checks for Google Compute instances that are idle for the last 30 days and terminates them after approval. |
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Finds Idle IP addresses and reports when it finds them. You can then delete the idle IP Addresses. |
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Finds Idle Persistent Disk Recommendations and reports when it finds them. You can then delete the idle volumes. |
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Finds Idle Virtual Machine Recommendations and reports when it finds them. You can then delete the idle instances. |
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Checks for inefficient instance utilization using provided CPU and Memory thresholds. Instances matching the criteria can be resized after user approval. |
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Checks Google Storage objects for last updated time and moves the object to “nearline” or “coldline” or delete (enable delete action as mentioned in README.md) after user approval. |
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Checks for snapshots older than specified number of days and, optionally, deletes them. |
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Checks Google CloudSQL instances based on provided CPU threshold and Resize them after approval. |
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Allows you to schedule start and stop times for your instance, along with the option to terminate instance, update and delete schedule. |
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Checks for unused Google Cloud SQL instances using DB connections over 30 day period. |
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Checks for unattached volumes older than specified number of days and, optionally, deletes them. |
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Checks Google for Unutilized IP Addresses and deletes them. |
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Checks for inefficient instance utilization using the provided CPU and Memory thresholds. Instances matching the criteria can be resized after user approval. |
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Checks cooldown time tag that the Instance Utilization policy sets and if time has expired, it adds back the tag to allow the instance to be resized. |
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Analyzes all account usage and determines recommend consolidation or deletion. |
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Analyzes all service usage and determines recommend consolidation or deletion. |
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Allows you to set up scheduled reports that will provide monthly actual v. budgeted cloud cost across all resources in the Billing Center(s) you specify, delivered to any email addresses you specify. |
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Analyzes bills for new service usage and notify. |
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Generates a Reserved Instances report by Billing Center. |
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Sends email notifications on reserved instance coverage. |
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Reports when the percentage of running instances increases or decreases beyond a specified threshold. |
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Starts and stops instances based on a schedule. |
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Allows you to set up scheduled reports that will provide summaries of cloud cost across all resources in the billing centers you specify, delivered to any email addresses you specify. The policy will report the following: Chart of the selected Date Range and Billing Term of utilization based on category. Daily average cost across the last week and last month. Total cost during previous full week (Monday-Sunday) and previous full month. Total cost during current (incomplete) week and month. We recommend running this policy on a weekly or monthly cadence. Note:Note the following:
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Automatically supersedes instances based on user-defined standards. |
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Automatically resizes instances based on user-defined standards. |
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Terminates instances based on tag. |
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Checks Unutilized IP Addresses and deletes them with approval. |
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Checks for unattached volumes older than specified number of days and, optionally, deletes them. |
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Tracking your cloud spend against your vendor commitments can be important to ensure you are on track and can help with your budgeting and financial planning. In addition to tracking spend over a defined period (1-3 years) we also provide a forecast based on historical months to give an indication of what your spend at the end of the commitment may be. Applying the policy is as simple as specifying the cloud vendor, duration and amount of commitment and the cost basis—amortized or non-amortized—that you need to track. |