My Commitments

Cloud service providers such as AWS, Azure, and GCP present various pricing models. Two primary examples are On-Demand pricing, where you pay for the services you consume, and Reserved pricing , a commitment-based discount model offering discounted rates for a predefined period. Commitment-based purchases, like Reserved Instances, can provide up to 72%⁕ discount compared to On-Demand pricing. This makes commitment-based purchasing a crucial element in a cloud cost-saving strategy, especially when consistently using cloud services at a relatively stable and predictable scale.

Types of Commitments

AWS Savings Plans

Savings Plans are a flexible pricing tool that can help you reduce your bill by up to 70% compared to On-Demand prices, in exchange for a one- or three-year spend commitment. AWS offers three types of Savings Plans: Compute Savings Plans, EC2 Savings Plans, and Amazon SageMaker Savings Plans.

  • How much should the hourly commitment amount be for Savings Plans?

    The Commitment Recommendation menu provides information on commitment conditions such as purchase type, commitment duration, and payment type, including the hourly commitment amount.

  • What should be the commitment duration for Savings Plans?

    1 year or 3 years

  • Which type of Savings Plans should you choose to purchase?

    1. EC2: Applies to the committed usage of EC2 instances within the specified EC2 family and region, regardless of size, tenancy, or operating system.

    2. Compute: The most flexible type, applicable to usage across EC2 instances, AWS Fargate (ECS, EKS), and AWS Lambda services, regardless of region, instance family, size, tenancy, or operating system.

    3. Mixed Savings Plans: Applies both EC2 Savings Plans and Compute Savings Plans appropriately.

  • On which resources is the Savings Plans commitment discount applied?

    Amazon EC2 AWS Fargate for AWS Elastic Container Service (ECS) AWS Fargate for AWS Elastic Kubernetes Service (EKS) AWS Lambda Amazon SageMaker

Read more about AWS Savings Plans

AWS Reserved Instances

Reserved Instances provide a discounted hourly rate and an optional capacity reservation for EC2 instances. AWS Billing automatically applies your RI’s discounted rate when attributes of EC2 instance usage match attributes of an active RI. If an Availability Zone is specified, EC2 reserves capacity matching the attributes of the RI. The capacity reservation of an RI is automatically utilized by running instances matching these attributes. You can also forego capacity reservations and purchase an RI that is scoped to a region. These RIs automatically apply the RI discount to instance usage across AZs and instance sizes in a region, making it easier for you to take advantage of the RI’s discounted rate.

  • How many Reserved Instances should I purchase?

    The OpsNow Recommendations tab provides information on commitment conditions, including the recommended quantity to purchase, instance type, region, platform, and more.

  • What should be the commitment duration for Reserved Instances?

    1 year (12 months) or 3 years (36 months)

  • Which class should be selected when purchasing Reserved Instances?

    Convertible or Standard

  • On which resources is the Reserved Instances commitment discount applied?

    Amazon EC2 Amazon RDS Amazon Redshift Amazon ElastiCache

  • For which resources are Reserved Instances commitment recommendations provided?

    Amazon EC2 Amazon RDS Amazon OpenSearch Amazon Redshift Amazon ElastiCache

Read more about AWS Reserved Instances

Azure Reservations

Azure Reservations help you save money by committing to one-year or three-year plans for multiple products. Committing allows you to get a discount on the resources you use. Reservations can significantly reduce your resource costs by up to 72% from pay-as-you-go prices. Reservations provide a billing discount and don't affect the runtime state of your resources. After you purchase a reservation, the discount automatically applies to matching resources.

You can pay for a reservation up front or monthly. The total cost of up-front and monthly reservations is the same and you don't pay any extra fees when you choose to pay monthly. Monthly payment is available for Azure reservations, but not third-party products.

  • How many Reservations should I purchase?

    The OpsNow recommendations tab provides information on commitment conditions, including the recommended quantity to purchase, region, instance flexibility group, and more.

  • What should be the commitment duration for Reservations?

    1 year or 3 years

  • On which resources is the Reservations commitment discount applied?

    Virtual Machines Storage Postgre MySQL SQL Database Azure Database for MySQL SQL Managed Instance Azure Database for MariaDB Redis Cache

  • For which resources are Reservations commitment recommendations provided?

    Virtual Machines

Read more about Azure Reservations

GCP Commitment Use Discounts

Committed use discounts (CUDs) provide discounted prices in exchange for your commitment to use a minimum level of resources for a specified term. The discounts are flexible, cover a wide range of resources, and are ideal for workloads with predictable resource needs.

When you purchase Google Cloud committed use discounts, you commit to a consistent amount of usage for a one- or three-year period. With spend-based commitments, the usage is measured in dollars per hour and equivalent to your on-demand spend. You receive a discounted rate on the usage your commitment covers, but any usage over the committed amount is charged at the on-demand rate.

  • Under what conditions should commitments be purchased?

    The OpsNow Recommendations tab provides information on commitment conditions, including commitment type, duration, resource type, and more.

  • What should be the commitment duration?

    1 year or 3 years

  • On which resource is the commitment discount applied?

    Compute Engine (Virtual Machines)

  • For which resources are commitment recommendations provided?

    Virtual Machines

Read more about Committed Use Discounts

Checking commitment inventory

The Inventory tab allows you to check the quantity and expiration dates of the commitments you have. By selecting the cloud service and duration you want to view in the top right corner of the screen, the total of commitments and the remaining days will be displayed in the card view. In the bottom table, you can find information such as commitment ID, cloud account, type, region, instance family, remaining days, start and end dates, duration and payment options, hourly commitment, savings amount, charges, and more.

Viewing commitment recommendations

On the OpsNow Recommendations tab, you can explore the most suitable commitments for your organization's cloud usage. If you select the cloud service in the top right corner and choose commitment type, cloud account, and data analysis period in the top left corner, a variety of commitment options are displayed. The commitments with the lowest cost are tagged with "Lowest Cost," and those recommended through OpsNow analysis are tagged with "Recommended." Clicking on a tile in the tile view will display detailed information about the selected commitment.

If you want to purchase a commitment as recommended, click on the Purchase button in the top right corner of the detailed table. If you are logged into the cloud service console, you will be directed to the commitment purchase screen; if you are not logged in, you will be directed to the login screen.

If you wish to download the commitment recommendation details as a file, click on the "Download" button in the top right corner.

Commitment

Term

Description

Common

Savings Rate

When you purchase commitments, this would be the estimated savings rate compared to the On-Demand cost.

Coverage

The percentage of the total cost incurred for the cloud resources eligible for commitment discounts to which the commitment discount has been applied.

Estimated Total Coverage

The overall coverage rate expected when purchasing the recommended commitment based on the analysis of usage during the specified period.

Estimated Coverage Rate

This rate shows how purchasing according to the recommendation will affect the coverage rate compared to the rate before the purchase.

All Upfront

The All Upfront option requires paying the entire cost for the committed duration upfront. When compared to On-Demand instance rates, this option offers the highest discount.

Partial Upfront

The Partial Upfront option involves an upfront payment of at least half of the committed amount, with the discounted hourly rate for instances paid monthly throughout the committed period.

No Upfront

There is no upfront payment at the time of commitment purchase, and the discounted cost is billed monthly over the contracted period.

Savings Plans

Purchase Type

EC2: Providing maximum discounts for EC2 across operating systems. Compute: Offering maximum flexibility, covering EC2, Lambda, and Fargate across various operating systems, instance families, and regions.

Hourly Commitment

When you purchase Savings Plans in the AWS console, enter the discounted hourly commitment amount recommended here.

Reserved Instances

Flexibility

Your RI applies to any instance in its family of its same size or smaller. For example, if you purchase an RI for an m3.large instance, the RI also applies to m3.medium instances.

Purchase Recommendations

When purchasing Reserved Instances in the AWS console, enter the quantity recommended here.

Checking commitment utilization status

In the OpsNow Utilization tab, you can assess how effectively commitments are being utilized through various metrics. If you select the cloud service in the top right corner and choose commitment type, cloud account, and data analysis period in the top left corner, the utilization status of the commitments you own for that cloud service account will be displayed on the screen. Please refer to the table below for explanations of each metric.

Metric

Description

Total Utilization

The utilization rate of your commitments, indicating the overall effectiveness in leveraging commitments.

Commitments

Commitments allow you to purchase resources at reduced hourly rates by committing to using specific instances for a predefined period.

Used Commitments

Used commitments represent the proportion of commitments that have been utilized compared to the total commitments purchased.

Net Savings

Net Savings indicates how much you've saved by comparing the cost of commitments you've used with the cost of On-Demand resources.

Savings Rate

The percentage of cost savings achieved by comparing total net savings to the cost of using On-Demand resources.

Checking how much of my cloud usage is covered by commitments

In the Coverage tab, you can check how much of your cloud usage is covered by commitments. A higher coverage indicates effective utilization of commitments. If you select the cloud service in the top right corner and choose commitment type, cloud account, and data analysis period in the top left corner, the coverage of the commitments you own for that cloud service account will be displayed on the screen. Please refer to the table below for explanations of each metric.

Metric

Description

Total Coverage

Coverage represents the portion of your cloud usage that is covered by commitments.

On-Demand Cost Equivalent

The cost of the commitment hours that you used, based on the public On-Demand prices.

Actual On-Demand Cost

Actual On-Demand cost incurred.

Total Cost

All expenses incurred from using cloud resources.