My Commitments

The My Commitments feature in Finout provides you with an in-depth view of your cloud commitments.

Note: As of now, this feature supports AWS Reserved Instance commitment types, but eventually it will include all major cloud vendors' commitments. For a deeper dive into these commitments, refer to the main documentation here.

Why Use My Commitments?

As cloud services continue to grow and diversify, users are frequently navigating numerous commitments, each having its distinct terms. Given this increasing complexity, there's a significant demand for a straightforward, efficient tool that allows users to manage these commitments while optimizing costs and usage.

Key Features:

1. Monitor all the plans you've opted for from your cloud provider in one place. Currently, Finout supports AWS, but GCP will be coming soon.

2. Gain a high-level view of your coverage % and your utilization % of all your plans by type or any filter in the MegaBill.

3. Ability to dig deeper and examine coverage and utilization for each specific plan, refining your cloud management strategy.

This feature is split into three main sections:

1. Executive Summary

2. Reserved Instances Commitments

3. Saving Plans Commitments

Executive Summary

The Executive summary provides a concise overview of your AWS commitments, equipping you with key metrics to manage your cloud commitments expenditure optimally.

Note: This is only supported for EC2 instances.

• Filters and time frame settings: Filter the executive summary using specific AWS cost data or Virtual Tags. Additionally, select a relevant timeframe for the overview.
• Coverage: Represents the percentage of costs saved by not paying on-demand pricing.

  

  It includes the following resources:

  • EC2 - Compute

  • RDS - Compute

  • RDS - Other

  • ElastiCache

  • Redshift

  • AmazonDynamoDB

  • DynamoDB - On Demand Read

  • DynamoDB - On Demand Write

  • DynamoDB - Provisioned Write

  • DynamoDB - Provisioned Read

  • SageMaker

  • Amazon Elastic MapReduce

  • AmazonES

  • Lambda

  • EC2 Container Service - Fargate Memory

  • EC2 Container Service - Fargate Compute. Why is the coverage rate in Finout different from AWS? Finout focuses on fewer resources and calculates coverage rates using only Reserved Instances (RIs), while AWS includes both RIs and Savings Plans (SPs) across a broader range of resources.

    Note: AWS presents savings per plan coverage at a yearly level, whereas Finout provides these calculations at a daily level.

• Utilization: Indicates how much of your commitments you are using. For example, if the utilization is 80%, it means that you are not using 20% of your commitments for the given period. This is only for EC2 Reserved Instances (RIs).

• Savings: The total amount you've saved during the chosen period by using your commitments. This is only for EC2 Reserved Instances (RIs).

• Waste: Represents the cost of unused commitments during the set period and filter. To reduce this wastage, you can use Finout’s automated commitment management (learn more about CostGuard). This is only for EC2 Reserved Instances (RIs).

Executive summary graphs

1. Coverage: Your daily coverage status is based on the selected filters and timeframe. Use the Group By feature to further break down the coverage status according to specific groups by values.

2. Reserved instance utilization: Showcases the utilization rate of reserved instances, helping identify underutilized commitments.

3. Hourly usage by purchase options: Your hourly commitment usage versus the on-demand usage, illustrates the frequency at which your commitments are utilized.

   
4. On-demand cost by family type: The on-demand costs break down based on the instance family, helping identify potential areas for improved coverage and savings.

   

Filtering the executive summary

1. To filter by specific cost data, customize your view by selecting specific AWS cost metrics of interest.

   
2. To filter by timeframe, select the duration for the data representation.

   
3. To group by, and organize data using various aspects of the Finout MegaBill for a targeted review, such as Virtual Tags, cost centers, services, and more (read the full documentation on Finout’s MegaBill).

   

Reserved Instances Commitments

The Reserved Instances Commitments feature includes a detailed view of your Reserved Instances commitments, highlighting active RI purchases and their performance metrics.

Note: This is only supported for EC2 instances.

Reserved Instances performance metrics

• Plan ID: A unique identifier for each Reserved Instance.

• Instance type: The specific type of Reserved Instance (e.g., m5.large, t3.nano).

• Expiration: Date when the Reserved Instance term ends.

• Utilization: A visual and percentage representation of how much of the reserved capacity usage.

• Net savings: The savings gained by choosing a Reserved Instance over on-demand pricing. Additionally, AWS presents savings per plan coverage at a yearly level, whereas Finout provides these calculations at a daily level.

• Underutilized waste: Costs for any unused reserved capacity.

• Region: The AWS region of the Reserved Instance.

• Operating system: The operating system associated with the Reserved Instance.

• Reservation term: The duration of the reservation, typically one or three years.

• Offering class: Type of Reserved Instance purchased, such as 'Standard' or 'Convertible'.

• Payment option: The chosen payment method, such as 'no upfront', 'partial upfront', or 'all upfront'.

• Units: Number of Reserved Instances in the commitment.

Main insights from the Reserved Instances Commitments feature

1. Increase utilization: Identify Reserved Instances with low usage and implement strategies to increase their utilization.

2. Renewal: Review expiring Reserved Instances and consider renewal options based on current and projected usage.

3. Reallocation: Strategically adjust workloads to better align with the specifications of your Reserved Instances to maximize their value and benefits.

Saving Plans Commitments

The savings plan commitments view is designed to provide users with detailed insights into their active savings plans, helping you monitor and manage them effectively. Additionally, AWS presents savings per plan coverage at a yearly level, whereas Finout provides these calculations at a daily level.

In this view, you can filter the savings plans by type, Instance family type, term (1, 3 years), and purchase option (partial upfront, all upfront).

Note: This is only supported for EC2 instances.

Savings plan commitments view details

• Plan ID: A unique identifier for the savings plan.

• Savings plan type: Displays the type of savings plan (e.g., Compute).

• Instance type family: Shows the category of instances or services covered in the savings plan (if applicable).

• Expiration: Indicates when the savings plan will end.

• Utilization: Represents the percentage of the committed usage that has been consumed.

• Net savings: Reflects the total cost savings achieved through the plan. Additionally, AWS presents savings per plan coverage at a yearly level, whereas Finout provides these calculations at a daily level.

• Underutilized waste: The amount of financial waste due to underutilization of the committed plan.

• Region: The geographical region where the savings plan is applicable.

• Term: The duration for which the savings plan is active, typically noted in years or months.

• Payment option: The payment method chosen for the savings plan, such as 'no upfront', 'partial upfront', or 'all upfront'.

• Hourly commitment: The committed hourly cost as per the savings plan.

• Total commitment: The total cost commitment over the term of the savings plan.

RI Explorer

Organizations that manually purchase and manage commitments often struggle to align Reserved Instances (RIs) with fluctuating usage patterns, such as nightly spikes. They require hourly insights to compare on-demand usage and rates against RI cost and usage, enabling more accurate commitment management. This includes examining on-demand hourly patterns to identify opportunities for purchasing additional commitments and analyzing RI utilization for optimization of existing commitments.

With RI Explorer, users can track and compare hourly data on instances that are eligible for RI’s using purchase groups. Additionally, AWS presents savings per plan coverage at a yearly level, whereas Finout provides these calculations at a daily level.

Note: Purchase groups are collections of resources sharing the same instance family, region, and OS. These groups encompass all possible combinations within an AWS account based on utilized resources, regardless of their billing type (on-demand, RI, SP, etc.).

This granular data empowers organizations to manage manually purchased commitments more effectively and precisely, optimizing both usage and costs while also aiding in the purchase of new commitments.

1. Graph and metrics that display the cost or usage of RI’s per different purchase groups based on the chosen filters. These groups encompass all possible combinations within an AWS account based on utilized resources, regardless of their billing type (on-demand, RI, SP, etc.).

   Note: Purchase groups are collections of resources sharing the same instance family, region, and OS.

2. Total Cost (per purchase group): This summarizes the cost for each group, regardless of billing type, within the selected period.

3. Total On-Demand Cost (per purchase group): This represents the total on-demand cost for each group during the filtered period.

4. Coverage Rate (per purchase group): Calculates the percentage of costs covered by commitments, excluding on-demand costs, for each group within the selected period.

5. RI Utilization Rate (per purchase group): Measures the percentage of Reserved Instance (RI) usage for each group within the selected period. Utilization indicates how effectively the purchased RIs are being used, helping you identify opportunities for optimization and ensuring commitments are fully leveraged.

6. On-Demand Baseline (per purchase group): Displays the greatest common denominator for on-demand cost and usage, providing a clear reference point for comparison. This can be used to purchase new commitments or expand existing ones.

7. Filters by choosing specific MegaBill keys. The chosen keys will affect the presented purchase groups

8. Time Filter: Choose the timeframe for displaying the data.

   Note: The default is for the past seven days.

9. Choose to display the hourly data by your Cost or Usage.

   Note: The default is cost.

10. Sort the groups by: Total Cost, Total On-Demand, Coverage Rate, RI Utilization, and On-Demand Baseline.

11. Redirects you to Megabill with the selected prepopulated filters.

FAQs

How do Finout’s savings per plan calculations differ from AWS?

AWS calculates savings per commitment yearly, whereas Finout provides savings per commitment calculations on a daily level. This allows for more granular tracking and optimization of cloud costs in Finout.

What are the required permissions?

• assumeRole

• ce:GetReservationUtilization

• ce:GetSavingsPlansUtilizationDetails

Note: You need to grant Finout permissions for each AWS payer account for which you want to have commitments in Finout.

What to do if I don’t have permissions?

• Permission issues result in no data being displayed in the Reserved Instances Commitment tab.

  
• An N/A appears under the Utilization metric on the RI Explorer tab.

  

How do I proceed if I don’t have permissions?

• A Missing Permissions icon appears at the top of the page. Hover on the to see all the missing permissions.
• For those who utilized CloudFormation during the onboarding process, run the update function.
• For manual onboarding, modify the JSON based on the onboarding process.

Why do I see RI and SP data under my commitments but no data in the commitments log?

There are two possible reasons for this:

1. The commitments log requires different permissions than the "My Commitments" page. If you don’t have the necessary access, you won’t see the log.

2. Commitment logs only appear when an RI or SP plan is purchased while the account is already onboarded to Finout. If the plan was purchased before onboarding, logs will not appear. Additionally, logs are only retained for 30 days—if no action was taken on the plan within that timeframe, the logs won’t be available.