Manage Reserved Instance Recommendations

Commander retrieves recommendations to purchase EC2 Reserved Instances (RIs) from AWS. Purchasing RIs provides a significant discount compared with paying for on-demand pricing. Based on your Amazon EC2 instance uptime, Commander retrieves and displays potential EC2 RI purchases for each region and shows you the projected savings for each purchase, based on regions.

• There's a fee of $0.01 USD per request to AWS to retrieve recommendation data. Generally, only one request is required per consolidated billing account. For cloud accounts with many resources, multiple requests may be required. These request fees will be visible on the Cost Dashboard.
• Costs associated with recommendations are displayed in the user’s preferred currency, except in the Reserved Instance Recommendations report, where you can specify the currency for the report.
• RI recommendations aren't visible in the Service Portal.

View all Reserved Instance recommendations

1. Configure the RI recommendation settings in Commander.

   For more information on configuring RI recommendation settings, see Customize the rules used for Reserved Instance recommendations.

2. Go to Tools > Recommendations.

   All recommendations are shown, including rightsizing, power schedule, and RI recommendations.

3. Enter "reserved" in the search to view only RI recommendations.

   You may have to click Show Quick Search to hide the filter.

4. Click any recommendation to view details.

View Reserved Instance recommendations for a region

1. Configure the RI recommendation settings in Commander.

   For more information on configuring RI recommendation settings, see Customize the rules used for Reserved Instance recommendations.

2. In the Infrastructure view or the Applications view, navigate to an AWS region.

   If the region has an active recommendation, a blue alert box appears on the region's Summary tab.

3. Expand the alert box to view details.

View full information on a Reserved Instance recommendation

1. When viewing the details of a RI recommendation, click the View link.

The Report Generator for the Reserved Instance Recommendations report appears, displaying the settings used to generate the recommendation. The "Region" and "Linked Accounts" settings won't be prepopulated when the Reserved Instance Recommendations report is viewed from a recommendation but the report will still generate the correct recommendations.

You can change these settings, but if you do, keep in mind that the recommendations in the resulting report may not match the recommendations you were just viewing. See Customizing the rules used for Reserved Instance recommendations below for more information on the settings.

2. Click Generate to generate the report.

When the report has been generated, it appears in the Generated Reports list in the right pane.

3. Double-click a report in the list to view it.

For more information on this report, see AWS Reserved Instance Recommendations Report.

Ignore Reserved Instance recommendations

If you decide that a recommendation shouldn't be applied, you can ignore it for a specified number of days or forever.

1. When viewing the details of a RI recommendation, click Ignore.
2. In the Ignore Recommendation dialog, you can either ignore the recommendation:
• for a specified number of days. The recommendation disappears from the list. After the specified number of days has passed, another recommendation may be made.
• forever. The recommendation disappears from the list. No further recommendations will be generated for this region.
3. Optional: Type text in the Reason field.
4. Click Ignore.

Allow new recommendations after ignoring

You can allow new recommendations for a region after a recommendation has been ignored.

1. Under Ignored Recommendations, click the blue hyperlink indicating how many recommendations have been ignored.
2. In the Ignored Recommendations pop-up list, select a row.
3. Click Allow New Recommendations.
4. Click Yes to confirm the change.

   The region disappears from the Ignored Recommendations list, the original recommendation is closed, and another recommendation for this region may be generated.

   Commander waits five minutes before generating new recommendations.

5. Click OK to close the Ignored Recommendations pop-up list.

Customize the rules used for Reserved Instance recommendations

You can customize the settings used to display RI purchase recommendations.

There is a fee of $0.01 USD per request to AWS to retrieve recommendation data. Generally, only one request is required. For accounts with many resources, multiple requests may be required. These fees will be visible on the Cost Dashboard.

1. Select the RI Recommendation Configuration tab, then configure the following attributes:
• Select the checkbox next to Enabled. This is checked by default.

  This feature is enabled by default. When this checkbox isn't selected, no RI recommendations will be displayed.

• Looking Back: Select the time period of past usage to include in the recommendation calculations.
• Payment Option: Select the method of payment for the RI.
• All Upfront: Pay for the entire reservation term in one upfront payment. Offers the highest savings rate.
• Partial Upfront: Pay for part of the reservation term in an upfront payment, then pay the remainder in monthly installments. Costs more than All Upfront, but less than No Upfront.
• No Upfront: Pay for the reservation in monthly installments throughout the term's duration. Offers the lowest savings rate.
• RI Term: Select a one-year or a three-year term for RIs.
• Offering Class: Select standard or convertible RIs.
• Limit Spending To: The currency for this value must be USD, however the recommendations will display costs in the user's preferred currency. When you enter a value in this field, the report will cap the spending at the specified limit. This option is useful if you already know the amount you can spend on RIs. An empty field means that there is no spending limit, and all purchases are included in the report, regardless of cost. This value is applied after the "Required Savings %" value.
• Required Savings %: Enter the lowest percent that you want to save with RI purchases. For example, if you want to see reservation recommendations that save you at least 20% of the cost of on-demand options, enter 20. An empty field means there is no required saving limit. This value is applied before the "Limit Spending To" value.
2. Click Save Settings.