Announcing AWS Reserved Instance Recommendations

New In-App RI Recommendations

Continuing with our commitment to helping you save money in the cloud, we’ve added a recommendation engine that helps you see which AWS Instances would benefit from a Reserved Instance (RI) reservation.

This new feature is included in all Hyperglance plans at no extra cost.

In this post, we'll cover the following topics:

• What are AWS Reserved Instances (RIs)?

• What are the benefits of using RIs?

• Hyperglance RI Recommendations

What are AWS Reserved Instances?

AWS Reserved Instances (RIs) are a billing and capacity reservation model designed to help AWS users optimize their costs and ensure resource availability for their Amazon EC2 instances.

Unlike On-Demand Instances, which are billed on a pay-as-you-go basis, RIs require a commitment for a one- or three-year term. In exchange for this commitment, users receive a significant discount on their EC2 instance usage, often up to 75% compared to On-Demand rates. This makes RIs an ideal choice for workloads with predictable and consistent usage patterns.

When purchasing a Reserved Instance, you have to specify parameters including instance type, platform, and tenancy, as well as the desired Availability Zone (AZ). This reservation guarantees that the specified resources will be available when needed, reducing the risk of capacity shortages during peak demand or regional constraints.

AWS offers three payment options for RIs: All Upfront, Partial Upfront, and No Upfront. These options provide the flexibility to choose a payment plan that best aligns with budgetary and cash flow requirements. In general, the more you pay upfront, the greater the discount you'll receive.

A notable RIs feature is instance size flexibility, which allows you to apply your RI's discounted rate to different instance sizes within the same instance family. This flexibility makes it easy for AWS users to adapt their RIs as their workloads change over time, without having to forfeit cost savings.

What are the Benefits of Using RIs?

As a cloud professional, optimizing your cloud environment for cost and performance is crucial. AWS Reserved Instances (RIs) offer a budget-friendly and efficient way to manage your resources.

Here are five reasons why we think AWS RIs s should be part of your cloud management strategy:

1. Significant Cost Savings

The most notable advantage of RIs is the substantial cost savings they offer compared to On-Demand Instances. With a one- or three-year commitment, you can save up to 75% compared to On-Demand rates. RIs are an excellent choice for workloads with predictable usage patterns, allowing you to lock in lower rates and minimize long-term cloud spending.

2. Capacity Reservation

Another benefit of RIs is their capacity reservation feature. When you purchase a Reserved Instance, you're securing a discounted rate and reserving capacity in the selected Availability Zone. This ensures that you'll always have the necessary resources available when you need them, providing peace of mind during periods of high demand or regional capacity constraints.

3. Flexible Payment Options

AWS offers three payment options for Reserved Instances: All Upfront, Partial Upfront, and No Upfront. This flexibility allows you to choose the payment plan that best aligns with your budget and cash flow requirements. Typically, the more you pay upfront, the greater your overall savings will be.

4. Instance Size Flexibility

With the introduction of instance size flexibility, RIs have become even more adaptable to your evolving needs. This feature allows you to apply the discounted rate of a Reserved Instance to different instance sizes within the same instance family, making it easier to accommodate changes in your workloads without sacrificing cost savings.

5. Exchangeable RIs

If your organization's cloud requirements change over time, AWS offers the option to exchange your RIs. This allows you to modify the instance family, operating system, or tenancy of your Reserved Instances, ensuring that you can adapt to new demands without being locked into a specific configuration.

There's no doubt that RIs have become a hugely valuable tool for cloud professionals that want to optimize their cloud environment for cost and performance (who doesn't?).

Those who leverage everything RIs have on offer enjoy substantial cost savings, reserve capacity for critical workloads, and can adapt to their organization's ever-evolving needs.

Hyperglance RI Recommendations

We have added a new area inside our cost page that lists all our recommendations. 

RI Recommendation Details

Hyperglance calculates the cost of your Instances over the last month and lets you see how much you can save by buying a 12 or 36-month Reserved Instance.

You can see cost savings percentage-wise, monthly or over the entire term.

It's easy to see at a glance where you can save and how much.

Add Context Using Our Extensive Inventory

Hyperglance connects to the AWS API to collect extensive metadata and metrics that allow you to deep dive into the performance and relationships of your Instances.

With just a few clicks you can see things like tagging, runtime, location and performance over the past month.

View AWS Resources in Context

Hyperglance includes an automatically built and updated diagram of all your AWS resources.

Sometimes to truly understand something, you need to see a picture. Hyperglance instantly shows you the instance, in context, in a dynamic, interactive diagram that can be exported to .vsdx, .png, .pdf or .csv format.

Hyperglance Will Cut Your Cloud Bill

Our new Reserved Instance Recommendations are another way for you to reduce your AWS costs while giving you the visibility you need in order to best manage your cloud.