Containers
Red Hat OpenShift Service on AWS (ROSA) annual contracts
Since Red Hat OpenShift Service on AWS (ROSA) was launched in March 2021, clients in all industries and more than 20 countries are using ROSA for a variety of workloads. In October 2021, AWS released a feature enabling customers to enter into one-year contracts for ROSA software subscriptions through the console to help with cost optimization.
Similar to Amazon Reserved Instances and AWS Savings Plans, ROSA annual contracts reduce the ROSA subscription cost based on an upfront agreement. These contracts can be combined with Reserved Instances and Saving Plans to reduce the cost of the underlying AWS resources, and now with the ROSA annual contracts, reduce the OpenShift subscriptions as well.
ROSA annual contracts can be enabled directly from the AWS ROSA console in three steps. Note that once ROSA is enabled within the AWS account, default billing will apply.
1. From the AWS ROSA Console Select Save money by purchasing a software contract.
2. Select the instance type of the worker nodes you want the contract to cover.
3. Select the number of worker nodes of the selected instance type that you want the contract to cover. Then select Create contract.
A success banner will appear at the top of console page:
It will take a few minutes for a new contract to become active. Active contracts appear in the Create contract pop-up which will appear on the AWS ROSA Console. It is possible to create multiple contracts, so give the workflow around 10 minutes to complete.
Once the contract is active, it will automatically be applied to worker nodes on a running cluster that match the instance type specified in the contract. Worker nodes running on a cluster in excess of the number of instances that the contract covers and worker nodes of types not covered in the contract will continue to be billed at the on-demand rate.
The customer’s next bill will include the full amount of the one-year contract, plus billing for any on-demand usage that occurred in the period before the one-year contract was procured. Worker nodes not included in the contract will continue to be billed on-demand.
What could these cost savings look like in practice?
Looking at the following AWS cost estimate for Amazon EC2, there is a rather attractive difference when using a Savings Plan.
Now let’s combine that with a ROSA annual contract.
That’s nearly a 30 percent cost reduction per OpenShift Subscription.
Conclusion
Customers can combine ROSA annual contracts with AWS Reserved Instances, Savings Plans, or ROSA consumption-based hourly billing to maximize the cost savings of OpenShift on AWS.