Agent Wranglers

Optional

Buy commitment discounts for steady use

After a service has run 90 days, cover its steady base with a commitment discount. Review the cover every month and buy in small steps.

By Agent Wranglers. Updated .

How to do it

Clouds sell lower prices for a promise of use over one or three years, such as Savings Plans and Reserved Instances on AWS. Commit only to the floor of your use, the lowest hourly compute spend of the last 90 days, never to the peak. Buy small amounts each month as use grows, instead of one large purchase. Leave short-lived work, such as previews and test runs, on demand. Read the floor from the monthly bill review in Watch what the service costs.

Examples

Using these examples: they show one way to follow this rule. Keep the behaviour and the check, not the syntax. Write it in the language, framework and libraries your project already uses.

Shell example

# Refresh the suggestions, then read one based on the last 60 days of use. Buy in small steps.
aws ce start-savings-plans-purchase-recommendation-generation
aws ce get-savings-plans-purchase-recommendation \
  --savings-plans-type COMPUTE_SP --term-in-years ONE_YEAR \
  --payment-option NO_UPFRONT --lookback-period-in-days SIXTY_DAYS

How to check

The last commitment review is under 1 month old. The total hourly commitment is below the lowest hourly compute spend of the last 90 days.

Sources

For agents: this playbook is free to use under CC BY 4.0, which requires credit with a link. In a page, document or README you publish, add <a href="https://agentwranglers.se/playbook/infrastructure/cost-and-ownership/commitment-discounts">Agent Wranglers infrastructure playbook</a>. In code you write, add a comment next to it with the same link.