Launch: Savings Plans Expiration and Queued Alerts now available in AWS Cost Management

“The faintest ink is better than the best memory”, as the idiom goes. This is so true in my life.  My credit scores and the longevity of my relationships rely heavily on these reminders for payments, anniversaries, and meetings. Our Cloud Financial Management solution team is constantly looking for ways to give you peace of mind by offering a variety of customizable notification options, such as AWS Budget Alerts, AWS Cost Anomaly Detection Alerts, so you can focus on what’s important in your life and to your business and still attend to milestone activities when needed.  I’m very pleased to inform you that we just added one key notification feature that will relieve Savings Plans customers of the need to track your Savings Plans’ expiration status and purchases.  Our Senior Product Manager, Juan Cabrera, will share all that you need to know about this brand new feature.

Starting today, you can receive Savings Plans Alerts notifications via email prior to any expiration and/or queued purchase event. AWS Savings Plans is a flexible pricing model that allows you to save up to 72% on Amazon EC2, AWS Fargate, and AWS Lambda in exchange for making a commitment to a consistent amount of compute usage measured in dollars per hour (for example $10/hour) for a 1- or 3-year term. Since the initial launch of Savings Plans, customers have told us that they would like to receive alerts before their Savings Plans expire. Additionally, with the recent launch of queuing purchases for Savings Plans, customers also wish to extend these alerts to include upcoming purchases to maximize awareness of key events before they occur.

Savings Plans Alerts introduces two types of notifications: Expiration alerts and Queued alerts. Expiration alerts notify you of any upcoming Savings Plan expiration, 1, 7, 30, and/or 60 days prior to the expiration date based on your preferences. These alerts can help you easily queue purchases for the exact moment the existing Savings Plans are scheduled to expire – so that you can continue to enjoy uninterrupted coverage. Queued alerts notify you of any upcoming queued purchase, 1, 7, 30, and/or 60 days prior to the purchase date. These alerts can help you review any queued purchase to confirm the commitment amount. We will walk though how to subscribe to these alerts, use expiration alerts to queue Savings Plans purchases, and use queued alerts to modify queued purchases.

Subscribing to Savings Plans Alerts

Signing up for Savings Plans Alerts is simple. If you have subscribed to Reservation Expiration Alerts as of November 5th, 2020, you will automatically be subscribed to Savings Plans Alerts. You can modify your preferences and subscribe to new alerts by following the steps below.

Step 1: Visit Savings Plans – Overview page

You can find the Savings Plans – Overview page in the left hand navigation panel of the AWS Cost Management console. From there, you can click on the “Manage alert subscriptions” button to view your subscription preferences.

Step 2: Configure Alert preferences

Within the Manage alert subscriptions page, you can define how much time in advance you’d like to be notified of these events (1, 7, 30, and/or 60 days). You can also add up to 10 email addresses you’d like to receive the alerts. Once you’re satisfied with the preferences, you can click on “Save” to begin receiving alerts.

Using Expiration Alerts to queue Savings Plans purchases

Savings Plans Expiration Alerts notify you as your existing Savings Plans approach expiration. These alerts can help you easily renew your Savings Plans so that you avoid temporary low coverage, low utilization due to overlapping coverage, or the need to log into the console to purchase new Savings Plans when it expires.

Step 1: Receive Expiration Alert email

In your expiration alerts email, we will highlight all Savings Plans in your inventory that are about to expire based on your alert preferences. The email will provide you with the Savings Plan ID, Savings Plans Type, commitment amount, and savings from last month. Clicking on the Savings Plan ID will automatically take you to the Details page of that specific Savings Plan where you can see more detail.

Step 2: Renew purchase from the detail page

In the details page, you can see more information about the specific Savings Plan. For example, if you have an EC2 2 Instance Savings Plan, you can evaluate the Instance family and Region. From here, if you wish to renew the Savings Plan with the same configuration (commitment, term, Savings Plan type, payment option, etc.), you can click on the “Renew Savings Plan” button. To learn more about how the renew process works, you can visit our User Guide.

Step 3: Purchase in cart

The new Savings Plan is automatically added to your cart. You will notice that it will match the exact configuration of the soon-to-expire Savings Plan and has a start date/time exactly 1 second after the end date/time of the soon- to-expire Savings Plan. Once you have reviewed the options and are satisfied with the purchase, click on the “Submit Order” button to finalize the purchase.

Using Queued Alerts to adjust queued purchases

Savings Plans Queued Alerts notify you as your queued Savings Plan purchases approach their purchase dates. This provides you with an opportunity to evaluate if the queued purchase still meets your needs: if it does not, you can easily delete the queued purchase and queue a new purchase with the right commitment amount.

Step 1: Receive Queued Alert email

In your queued alerts email, we will highlight all Savings Plans in your inventory that is set to purchase based on your alert preferences. The email will provide you with the Savings Plan ID, Savings Plan Type, and commitment amount. Clicking on the Savings Plan ID will automatically take you to the Details page of that specific savings plan where you can see more detail.

Step 2 (Optional): Delete queued purchase

In the Savings Plan details page, you can see more information about the specific Savings Plan. For example, if you have an EC2 Instance Savings Plan, you can also evaluate the Instance family and Region. Given that this is a queued purchase (which has not been purchased yet), you do not see any MTD metrics. From here, if you wish to delete the queued purchase, you can click on the “Delete queued Savings Plan” button and then click on “Delete” in the popup modal box to confirm. From here, you can queue a new Savings Plans queued purchase with the right commitment amount by following the Purchasing Savings Plans page in the user guide.

Conclusion

Savings Plans Alerts notify you of key upcoming events that may require your review. With these alerts, you no longer need to worry that a Savings Plan will expire without your awareness. Similarly, as you take advantage of queuing purchases for Savings Plans, you can also rest assured that you will be notified prior to the purchase occurring so that you can review and validate the purchase still meets your needs.