Apptio Cloudability helps you manage and optimize your AWS Savings Plans in concert with Reserved Instances. This article outlines capabilities that will help you begin incorporating Savings Plans into your cloud financial optimization strategy.
Viewing the Owned Savings Plan Inventory
Getting Started
Before you begin, you will want to ensure that the necessary AWS permissions have been enabled, which provide access to Savings Plan functionality.
To check the status of the necessary credentials:
- Credentialing must be viewed and performed by a user with admin rights for your Cloudability account. If you do not have admin rights or you are not sure if you have admin rights, check with your organization’s primary Cloudability administrator.
- Under Settings in the main navigation, select Vendor Credentials.
- Within the primary accounts view for the AWS tab, any master payer or linked account that owns Savings (or you are intending to use to purchase Savings) should have a green box with a white check status indicator under Advanced Features.
- For an account with any status indicators other than the green box with a white checkmark, select Details to inspect the individual credentials.
If the savingsplans:DescribeSavingsPlans permission under the Reservations subheading has a red X, it will need to be updated (by regenerating and applying CloudFormation templates) before you will be able to see an inventory of your Savings Plans.
Viewing Owned Savings Plans
To get to an inventory of your Savings Plans, select Savings Plans from within the Insights menu of the left side primary navigation.
Summary of key performance indicators (KPIs)
At the top of the Savings Plan home screen, you will see summary KPIs for the total quantity and hourly commit for your Savings Plans respective of any selected filters or views.
The main table below the KPIs provides detailed information about your individual Savings Plans including:
- Plan ID
- Account ownership
- Type
- Family and region (if applicable)
- Current state
- Expiration date
Sorting
The table's results can easily be filtered using the up and down arrows adjacent to each of the column headings.
Filtering
The table of Savings Plans can be sorted by either hyperlinked table values within the table or by the configurator.
Filtering with linked table values
Multiple filtering parameters can be applied quickly by clicking on one or multiple hyperlinked values in the main table.
NOTE: When using hyperlinked values to populate filters, only one value/parameter from each column can be selected at a time. See Filter Configurator below for removing filter parameters.
Filter Configurator
The Filter Configurator is available by clicking the pencil/edit icon that appears when hovering the mouse pointer above the Filters selection in the Savings Plans navigation menu.
Within the Filter Configurator, add a filter by clicking Add and applying:
- a parameter (Measure)
- a functional logical test (Operator)
- a Value to test against
Whether added through the Filter Configurator or by clicking URLs from within the main table, a filter can be removed by opening the Filter Configurator and clicking the X on the right of the specific item in the list of current filters.
Exporting results
You may export Savings Plan results for sharing or further analysis.
After clicking the export icon at the right of the Portfolio sub-navigation bar, you will be prompted to select a destination to save or view a .csv export of your relevant reservation asset information.
Purchase Recommendations
Getting started
Before beginning, you will want to ensure the necessary AWS permissions have been enabled, which provide access to Savings Plan functionality.
If the necessary credentials have not been enabled, when attempting to view Savings Plan purchase recommendations, the following message will be displayed:
To check the status of the necessary credentials:
- Credentialing must be viewed and performed by a user with admin rights for your Cloudability account. If you do not have admin rights or you are not sure if you have admin rights, check with your organization’s primary Cloudability administrator.
- Under Settings in the main navigation, select Vendor Credentials.
- Within the primary accounts view for the AWS tab, any master payer account that you are intending to use to purchase Savings should have a green box with a white check status indicator under Advanced Features.
- For any master account with any status indicators other than the green box with a white checkmark, select Details to inspect the individual credentials.
If the ce:GetSavingsPlansPurchaseRecommendation permission under the Reservations subheading has a red X, it will need to be updated (by regenerating and applying CloudFormation templates) before you will be able to view Savings Plan recommendations.
Viewing Saving Plan recommendations
To access any currently available Savings Plan recommendations, select Savings Plans from within the Insights menu of the left side primary navigation. Then select the Recommended tab.
At the top of the Recommended tab, you will see summary KPI totals for the displayed recommendations respective of any selected filters or views, including:
- Count of recommendation
- Sum of total upfront fees
- Estimated total savings
- Estimated aggregate savings percentage
When generating savings plan recommendations you can set preferences for:
- Savings Plan type (EC2 or Compute)
- Payment Model (All Upfront, No Upfront or Partial Upfront)
- Term (1 or 3 years)
- Look-back period (7, 30, or 60 days)
Savings Plan type, term, and payment model preferences can be accessed by selecting the Setting icon in the upper right corner of the page or Purchase Options in the sub-navigation bar.
Below the KPIs is the main table providing detail for individual Savings Plan purchase recommendations, including the upfront cost and expected savings. 
Recommendations can be filtered and sorted to reduce and refine the recommendations. Recommendations can also be exported in a .csv file. See Filtering, Sorting and Exporting above for more information.
NOTE: Both Savings Plan and Reserved Instance recommendations take into account Reserved Instance and Savings Plan assets your organization already owns. However, there is a delay in reporting for those assets being available. For this reason, you should wait at least 24 hours after acting on Reserved Instance recommendations before generating and acting on any Savings Plan recommendations.
Reference
For additional information on managing your AWS Savings Plans with Apptio Cloudability, see:
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