With AWS Savings Plans - Next stop is AWS Budgets
Tags: aws, costoptimization, budgets, ec2
Published: 2023-09-22 03:33:47


Welcome to another post to highlight on how to track the AWS Savings Plan already in use

AWS Savings Plans has been explained quite enough in the earlier posts but still "AWS Savings Plans" can be purchased against compute(in general) or specific EC2 instance based on the region, tenancy, term & instance family

Let us assume that, we have all strategized purchase of savings plan and they are getting utilized, as well. What gives an assurance of how good the savings plan coverage is working out and also how far the coverage is still active, can be tracked using AWS Budgets of type "Savings Plan Coverage Report & "Savings Plan Utilization Report"

**Quick Notes:**
1. AWS Budgets supports savings plans tracking too
2. Savings Utilization is for tracking how much of the savings plan is still left out so that we can be alerted for new or renewal purchases, in order to avoid on-demand rates on compute
3. Savings Plan Coverage type of Budget is to identify & report how much of hourly commitment made for compute/ec2 is being utilized & reports when the commitment is below a threshold

Below are the sample screenshots of AWS Budget creation with no or less values but this is to give an idea of what parameters or filters can be used for a better optimized budget

_**Step1**_

i) select the type of budget w.r.t savings plans
ii) Name it accordingly

![Image description](https://dev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/articles/ht0cjut4mrt1lsdkvr6u.png)


_**Step2**_

i) Key part of creating a budget. Enter the threshold which you expect your coverage of hourly commitment to be met. In this example, I have set to 80% 
ii) Followed to that provide email addresses to where all alerts to be sent when the threshold isn't met

![Image description](https://dev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/articles/qrs9b1q8id0s2a8fxg8v.png)

_**Step3**_

i) Let us assume, "Utilization Savings Plan" is selected(though screen is coverage of savings plan) for budget
ii) the 20% threshold here is above which you would like to stay. For example, if you have purchased a savings plan and you always like to stay 20% utilization & above and would like to be alerted otherwise(when the left out savings plan is less than 20%)

![Image description](https://dev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/articles/7rqoe1ul4vqv461360b1.png)

_**Step4**_

i) When coming to "Budget Scope" you can narrow it down to just compute or specific dimension like "instance family"


![Image description](https://dev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/articles/zuv6y4ofrj8qfjq4g96p.png)

_**Step5**_

i) This part explains about the action that succeeds a Budget threshold violation. Purpose of creating budget is to notify or alert the same is covered in this parameter section

![Image description](https://dev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/articles/wubmfgbtaklv6twkr1y3.png)

_**Step6**_

i) Apart from receiving email to the addresses provided, you can also have AWS SNS Topic subscribed for to be alerted 
ii) Alert can also be sent to AWS Chime & Slack via AWS Chatbot

![Image description](https://dev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/articles/t22uotawiqdjl534ijn3.png)

_**Step7**_

i) Finally the budget is created in listed. All budgets are listed in this view and can be edited as needed
ii) "Current Vs Budgeted" is shown as zero as there isn't any savings plan

![Image description](https://dev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/articles/5iaz2v5i33qatsupbja2.png)


Happy budgeting with savings plans !!