Visualize your Savings Plan recommendations

A visualization of your recommendation can be used as a quick double check, and also assist to demonstrate the savings and risks to other job functions.

We will use the Cost Explorer hourly granularity feature to visualize Savings Plan recommendations. You need to have this enabled to view hourly usage, and there are associated costs.

  1. In the console go to AWS Cost Management by opening Cost Explorer: Images/VisualizeSP1.png

  2. Click on Recommendations: Images/VisualizeSP2.png

  3. Select EC2 Instance Savings Plans, 1-year, All upfront and 7 days: Images/VisualizeSP3.png If Payer is selected and you see few or no recommendations, select Linked account to display recommendations to the linked accounts within your AWS Organization.

  4. Scroll down and identify an instance family within your recommendations for later in this lab. If it is displaying the same instance family in multiple accounts, also note the account number: Images/VisualizeSP4.png

  5. Scroll up and click Cost Explorer: Images/VisualizeSP5.png

  6. To show the last 7 Days, click on the date range dropdown and select 7D, then click Apply: Images/VisualizeSP6.png

  7. From the granularity dropdown select Hourly: Images/VisualizeSP7.png

  8. Click the Service filter, select EC2-Instances (Elastic Compute Cloud - Compute) and click Apply filters: Images/VisualizeSP8.png

  9. In the Group by: options select Instance Type: Images/VisualizeSP9.png

  10. From the visualization dropdown select Line: Images/VisualizeSP10.png

  11. Apply a filter on the region if you use multiple regions: Images/VisualizeSP11.png

  12. If you have multiple instance types for a single family, you can select them by using a filter and choosing a stack graph. This will show the total costs for that family in the required region.

  13. Click More filters: Images/VisualizeSP12.png

  14. Click Purchase Option, select On Demand and click Apply: Images/VisualizeSP13.png

    If you have the same instance family in multiple accounts, select Linked Acount from the filters menu. Then select the account number you chose earlier in the lab and apply the filter.

  15. Hover over a recommendation that matches the family you chose earlier in the lab: Images/VisualizeSP14.png

  16. Cost Explorer gives $0.58 hourly usage of our m5.xlarge. Our recommended commitment was $0.354/hour for m5, 1-year, all upfront. Images/VisualizeSP15.png

  17. Now open the Savings Plan Pricing Page and select the EC2 Instance Savings Plans tab.

  18. Select the correct parameters that match the recommendation and view the rates: Images/VisualizeSP16.png

  19. The savings is 41%. We were using $0.58, so multiplied by 1.00-41% (0.59) = $0.344/hour.

We can see the recommendation is accurate and valid within $.01.