Viewing Potential Savings
Important:The Optimization page appears if you have one of the following Flexera One roles. For complete descriptions of each role available in Flexera One, refer to Flexera One Roles.
| • | Manage organization |
| • | View cloud costs |
| • | Billing center viewer |
| • | Billing center admin |
This section describes the features and business value provided on the Optimization page (Cloud > Cost Optimization > Optimization) and provides the following subsections:
| • | Total Potential Savings |
| • | Setting Up Recommendations |
| • | AWS Discount Program Coverage |
On the Optimization page, the Total Potential Savings chart shows how much spend could be saved per month for your organization. Using the Billing Center drop-down, you can home in on the specific cost center or line of business you desire to investigate. Clicking the chart title—Total Potential Savings—navigates you to a table describing each specific recommendation and the potential savings for that recommendation. Clicking the specific recommendation link in the table takes you to an even more detailed view of the recommendation findings.
Flexera recommendations are created from our powerful Automation capability and Policy templates, allowing organizations to quickly add and customize recommendations. Recommendations provide some distinct advantages over recommendations provided directly by your cloud provider.
| • | Flexera recommendations are configurable allowing you to choose different parameters to meet your business needs. |
| • | Flexera recommendations are associated to billing centers allowing cost center owners to view the potential savings specific to their line of business. |
| • | Flexera recommendations are included for multiple cloud providers in a single view. |
| • | Flexera recommendations show savings based on actual cost of resource vs public pricing. |
Total Potential Savings are tracked in two distinct categories: Rate Reduction and Usage Reduction.
Rate Reductions show what you might save per month by using a discount program, such as reserved instances, from a cloud vendor. The savings are aggregated from the output of Flexera’s cloud automation engine. See the following table for a description of the specific, automated recommendation policies and versions used by Flexera to aggregate the potential savings. Policies with version 2.6 or higher will need to be applied by your organization to gather the potential savings. See the Setting Up Recommendations section for more information.
Click the link in the Policy Name column to access the corresponding policy template.
|
Policy Name |
Description |
Version |
|
Identifies AWS RIs to purchase and calculates savings. |
2.6 or higher. |
|
|
Identifies AWS Savings Plans to purchase and calculates savings. |
2.6 or higher. |
|
|
Identifies Azure RIs to purchase and calculates savings. |
2.6 or higher. |
|
|
Identifies Azure Savings Plans to purchase and calculates savings. |
1.0 or higher. |
|
|
Finds Google Committed Use Discount Recommendations and reports when it finds them. |
2.0 or higher. |
Note:For EC2 instances, Flexera recommends only enabling AWS Savings Plans Recommendations. Enabling both RI (Reserved Instances) and Savings Plans recommendations for EC2 instances will lead to an inaccurate count of the potential savings.
Usage Reductions show what you might save by eliminating waste in your cloud ecosystem. See the following table for a description of the specific, automated recommendation policies and versions used by Flexera to aggregate the potential savings. Policies will need to be applied by your organization to gather the potential savings. See the Setting Up Recommendations section for more information.
Click the link in the Policy Name column to access the corresponding policy template.
|
Policy Name |
Description |
Version |
|
Checks for instances that are idle for the last 30 days and calculates savings if terminated. |
3.3 or higher. |
|
|
Checks for snapshots older than specified number of days and calculates savings if deleted. |
3.3 or higher. |
|
|
Checks AWS for unused IP Addresses and calculates savings if deleted. |
3.4 or higher. |
|
|
Checks for database services that have no connections and calculates savings if deleted. |
3.3 or higher. |
|
|
Checks for unused volumes and if no read/write operations performed within a specified number of days and calculates savings if deleted. |
3.3 or higher. |
|
|
Checks for instances that are idle for the last 30 days and calculates savings if terminated. |
3.0 or higher. |
|
|
Checks for snapshots older than specified number of days and calculates savings if terminated. |
3.0 or higher. |
|
|
Checks for unused IP addresses in the given account and calculates savings if deleted. |
3.0 or higher. |
|
|
Checks for database services that have no connections and calculates savings if deleted. |
3.0 or higher. |
|
|
Checks for unused volumes older than specified number of days and calculates savings if deleted. |
3.0 or higher. |
|
|
Finds Idle Cloud SQL Instance Recommendations and reports when it finds them. You can then delete the idle volumes. |
2.0 or higher. |
|
|
Finds Idle IP addresses and reports when it finds them. You can then delete the idle IP Addresses. |
2.0 or higher. |
|
|
Finds Idle Persistent Disk Recommendations and reports when it finds them. You can then delete the idle volumes. |
2.0 or higher. |
|
|
Finds Idle Virtual Machine Recommendations and reports when it finds them. You can then delete the idle instances. |
2.0 or higher. |
This section describes how to set up recommendations.
To set up recommendations
| 1. | Create the Flexera Credentials for your cloud(s). Click the recommendation name in the table above for the permissions needed for each of the recommendations. Add the credentials by navigating to Credentials page (Automation > Credentials). Create the credentials in the “Master” account. |
| 2. | Use the Flexera Automation Catalog to apply the policies for the recommendations from the tables above. Use the Parameters to decide which options fit your savings options needs. Go to the Automation Catalog page (Automation > Catalog) and find the Recommendations listed below and apply the policies. The policies need to be applied in the same account where the credentials were created. Policies must be applied to the “Master” account. |
Note:The minimum version is recommended for the best experience for Spend Recommendations. Using earlier versions may cause incomplete data.
Another graph available is the AWS EC2 Running Cost by Purchase Option. This shows the percentage of coverage of various discount mechanisms. The four categories are On Demand, Savings Plan, Reserved, and Spot. See the figure below.
This graph is shown for organizations that have enabled reserved instance reallocation and savings plan reallocation. When these are enabled the purchase amount for the discount program is spread to the resources where those discounts are used. This shows the discounted cost of those resources, rather than showing no cost. Contact Flexera Support if you would like reallocation enabled.
