How does it work to purchase a savings plan when there is already one in place?

Question

What would the recommendation for Savings Plans look like via the AWS interface, given that the previous Savings Plans are still in force? Would we necessarily have to wait for a plan to expire in order to obtain information (recommendations) that would allow us to proceed?

How would we receive the suggestion from AWS with the Savings Plans still in force? Is the suggestion based on what is not covered by the current Savings Plans, or is there some way of incorporating the current Savings Plans Partial Upfront into the suggestion to opt for the no-upfront?

Accepted Answer

And to answer your question regarding recommendations - at this time the engine provides suggestions on new purchases of SP only based on the current on-demand usage. If I understood correctly what you are trying to do - you want to see the recommendations that would ignore current SPs and assume that NO usage on your accounts is covered by SPs... This is not possible with the default Cost Explorer recommendations at the moment as it ignores the usage that's already covered by SP (rightfully so, because it wants to provide you accurate recommendations assuming that if you make that purchase now, that you would continue saving money, and don't overcommit).

Generally, what customers do - if their usage is growing, they generally renew their SP commitment when it expires, and then check for additional recommendations for the remaining usage, so that's one solution that can help.

Answer

Hi,

To add to what Max said already, one of the tools you can use to better understand Savings Plan utilization and coverage, and to see how much Compute you are still paying at on-demand price is Cost Explorer (https://aws.amazon.com/aws-cost-management/aws-cost-explorer/).

Cost Explorer provides 2 predefined reports about Savings Plan Utilization and Coverage, these would give you already a high level view of the margin you have to increase your commitment. 
You can then create your own report in Cost Explorer to have a more detailed view.
With these parameters you will see how much you are still paying on-demand
```
Dimension: Services
Filters:
Services: EC2 – instances, Savings Plan for Compute Usage
Charge type: Excluded: Credit, Discount, Tax (to give a true usage view)
Aggregate costs by: Unblended
```
The diagram will show:
- **EC2-instances**: cost at OnDemand rate not covered by SP
- **SP Compute Usage**: SP charges / commitment

This is still quite inaccurate, but a good starting point. 
You have to refine the Date Range, Granularity and Filters, to reflect your needs. This will depend mostly on what Savings Plan you purchased (EC2, Compute), and you are planning to renew.

Because of the many different permutations of Savings Plans option and your Compute usage, it's not possible to give you a recommendation in a blog post. If you have Enterprise Support, I would suggest to get in touch with your Technical Account Manager on this.

Answer

The recommendation tool considers existing savings plans that are already purchased in your account. You have a n umber of tools that show you how much on-demand savings plan eligible workload you have available.

A savings plan is just a dollar commitment to either Compute (in the case of a compute savings plan) or EC2 (in the case of an EC2 Savings plan), in exchange for which AWS offer you a discount. You can find the discount rate for Compute and EC2 savings plans for each instance type and savings plan purchase option here: https://aws.amazon.com/savingsplans/compute-pricing/

You can have multiple savings plans in your account at the same time with different start and end dates and different purchase offerings (duration or payment type).

To understand the recommendations for savings plans refer to: https://docs.aws.amazon.com/savingsplans/latest/userguide/sp-recommendations.html

How does it work to purchase a savings plan when there is already one in place?

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