Viewing recommendations and optimizing costs for instances

Owned by Dhanraj Tijare (Unlicensed)
Last updated: Jun 13, 2021
5 min read

You can view the summary of the cost optimization recommendations for all instances used in your organization, or in any financial domain in your organization. You can also view the summary of rightsizing, startup/shutdown and idle instance recommendations for the available instances and accordingly apply the recommended actions to optimize costs.

  • Rightsizing instances: Aquila Clouds FinOps lists instances that need to have their instance type changed without capacity change, sized down or up. Whenever instances with lesser cost with same compute/memory capacity are found suggestions are made to change the workload to save cost without any risk to performance. If the analysis reveals that capacity is underutilized all appropriate options are listed along with the simulated charting of performance metrics (CPU and memory utilization) to help understand the impact once the recommended instance is selected.

    Wherever applicable, multiple instances are suggested with appropriate risk levels for the respective change. This enables you to evaluate the effect of change and take the appropriate decision. 

  • Optimizing idle instances: Aquila Clouds FinOps lists the instances that are idle with the simulated charting of performance metrics (CPU). Aquila Clouds Finops provides recommendations to shutdown instances that are not active.

  • Optimizing startup and shutdown schedule: Aquila Clouds FinOps lists those instances that are not used for one or more hours (every week) and can be shutdown for that time window. This is typically the case for non-production instances where it is only active during active hours of work. In some cases even production instances are not required to run continuously and can be shutdown as appropriate. Aquila Clouds FinOps provides usage report for all days of the week, based on the data collected for past 30 days. With the help of this report, you can set the schedule to automatically start and shut down instances at the scheduled time on the required day of the week. Once scheduled, Aquila Clouds FinOps recurrently starts and shuts down that instance every week according to the schedule, thereby, eliminating the need for manually tracking it every week.

This topic explains you how to:

Viewing cost optimization recommendations for instances

  1. On the side navigation bar, select the OPTIMIZER tab, and click Instances.

  2. Click any of the following:

    • Rightsizing: To view the potential savings on any instance when the rightsizing recommendations are applied.

       

    • Startup/Shutdown: To view the potential savings on any instance when the startup/shutdown recommendations are applied.

       

    • Idle Instances: To view the potential savings on any instance when the recommendations for idle instances are applied.

Optimizing costs using the recommendations for rightsizing instances

  1. On the side navigation bar, select the OPTIMIZER tab, and click Instances.

  2. Click Rightsizing.

     

  3. For the required instance, in the Rightsizing column, click Rightsizing.
    Aquila Clouds displays the Instance Details page.

     

  4. Based on the usage details, you can perform any one of the following:

    • Select the recommended instance.

      1. Select the recommended instance to save cost.

      2. Click Execute to start using the new instance.

      3. Select the required Instance State from the list and set the Execute Time.

      4. Click Apply.

    • Change the current state of the selected instance.

      1. Click Change State.
        Aquila Clouds displays the Change State page.

         

      2. Select the required Instance State from the list and set the Execute Time.

      3. Click Apply.

Aquila Clouds updates the instance based on the options selected.

Optimizing costs using the startup and shutdown recommendations for instances

  1. On the side navigation bar, select the OPTIMIZER tab, and click Instances.

  2. Click Startup/Shutdown.

     

  3. For the required instance, in the Startup/Shutdown column, click Startup/Shutdown.
    Aquila Clouds displays the Instance Details page.

     

  4. (Optional) Based on the current startup and shutdown schedule and usage details, you can perform any one of the following:

    • Use the Aquila Clouds recommended schedule.

      1. Click Recommended Schedule.
        Aquila Clouds displays the Recommended Schedule page.

         

      2. Click Use Recommendation Schedule.

    • Manually change the schedule for any hour of any day during the week.

      1. For the required day, click the required hour to toggle on/off the instances for that hour. For example, if you want to startup instances at 2 AM on Monday, toggle on 2 AM for Monday in the Service Domain Details page. 

      2. Click Execute to apply the selected schedule.

Aquila Clouds updates the schedule of the instance based on the option selected.

Optimizing costs using the recommendations for idle instances

  1. On the side navigation bar, select the OPTIMIZER tab, and click Instances.

  2. Click Idle Instances.
    Idle Instances: To view the potential savings on any instance when the recommendations for idle instances are applied.

     

  3. For the required instance, in the Idle Instances column, click Idle Instances.
    Aquila Clouds displays the Instance Details page.

     

  4. Click Execute.
    Aquila Clouds displays the Execute page.

     

  5. Select the required Instance State from the list and set the Execute Time.

  6. Click Apply.

Aquila Clouds updates the idle instance according to the options selected.



 

 

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