IPF Standard - AWS Savings Plans and Reserved instances (08-01-2025).docx

UNCLASSIFIED

IPF Standard AWS Savings Plans and Reserved Instances 2025-04-03 Purpose This document defines IPF standards for purchasing and utilizing AWS Savings Plans and Reserved instances.

Definitions AWS Savings Plans (AWS SP) are a flexible and cost-effective way to save on your AWS usage. These plans allow a consumer to commit to a specific amount of compute capacity over a one- or three-year term in exchange for a significant discount on your AWS bill.

AWS offers three types of Savings Plans – Compute Savings Plans, EC2 Instance Savings Plans, and SageMaker Savings Plans. Compute Savings Plans apply to usage across Amazon EC2, AWS Lambda, and AWS Fargate.

Reserved Instances (RI) require you to commit to a specific instance type, operating system, and region for a one- or three-year term in exchange for a discount on your AWS bill.

Explanation AWS SP and RI are both designed to help you save on your AWS usage, but they offer various levels of flexibility and cost savings. Cost analysis needs be performed on all AWS IPF deployments to identify where using AWS SP or RI would be a cost saver.

Considerations

· Currently only the Unclassified AWS environments have AWS SP available.

· All other AWS environments have RI available.

Unclassified EC2 AWS Accounts Standards for IPF Savings Plans

1. All accounts are required to purchase an annual AWS Compute Savings Plan (CSP).

a. Compute Savings Plans provide the most flexibility and help to reduce your costs by up to 66%. These plans automatically apply to EC2 instance usage regardless of instance family, size, AZ, Region, OS, or tenancy, and apply to Lambda usage.

i. Example: With a CSP, you can change from C4 to M5 instances, shift a workload between AWS regions, or move a workload from EC2 to Lambda at any time and automatically continue to pay the Savings Plans price.

b. AWS Cost Optimization Hub needs to be reviewed via the AWS Console before making any purchase requests.

i. You can use Cost Optimization Hub to identify, filter, and aggregate AWS cost optimization recommendations across your AWS accounts and AWS Regions.

1. The tool makes recommendations on resource rightsizing, idle resource deletion, Savings Plans, and Reserved Instances.

c. AWS also provides a CSP specific cost calculator at the link below.

i. https://aws.amazon.com/savingsplans/compute-pricing

1. All terms are 1 year when analyzing cost.

2. All payment options will be “All upfront.”

d. AWS Billing conductor should be reviewed to show past 12 months of billing data and usage.

i. Allows personnel to understand detailed level of spending information on an account basis.

e. AWS cost explorer should also be used for additional data gathering.

i. Cost Explorer Saved Reports can be used for the following metrics.

1. EC2 running hours.

2. SP Coverage

3. SP Utilization

2. CSP purchase requests need to be filled out on the IPF_AWS_CSP_Purchase_request excel located at the link below.

a. \\gold\office\office02\CIO-T\Non-Records\IPF\NR_1_Working_Folder\4_Engineering_Mgmt\Documents--IPF-CloudManagement\IPF_CostSavings_Documents

i. All fields are mandatory.

ii. CSP should cover 90% of total compute when being calculated.

iii. Never allocate 100% as you need to allow for on demand overhead.

b. Once completed the excel document needs to be emailed, in a group, to the below personnel for review.

i. Bayne Jeremy M NGA-IPF USA CTR

ii. Adams Khristopher -Khris- C NGA-IPF USA CIV

iii. Thurau Adam R NGA-IPF USA

3. Approval to purchase will come via email from one of the above Government reviewers to the program PM.

a. Once approval is in place the purchase needs to be completed ASAP.

b. It is the responsibility of the Account owner to ensure that the purchase takes place according to the approved excel document.

c. An authorized AWS user with “PRGMADMIN” permissions can initiate the AWS purchase via the AWS Console but must complete the following steps.

4. To purchase the plan, follow the steps below.

i. Log in to the AWS Management Console.

ii. Open the Billing and Cost Management console.

iii. In the navigation pane, under Savings Plans, choose Purchase Savings Plans.

iv. Under Savings Plans type, choose Compute Savings Plans.

v. Under Term, choose a commitment term (1-year) for your Savings Plans.

vi. Under Purchase commitment, in Hourly commitment, enter an hourly commitment amount.

1. Note: The Hourly commitment is the Savings Plans rate, and not the On-Demand spend.

vii. Under Payment option, choose “All upfront.”

viii. (Optional) To queue the Savings Plan to start on a future date, set the Start date.

1. The start date would be the first day of the next billable month if you use this option.

ix. Choose Add to cart.

x. On the Cart page, review your order, and choose Submit order.

xi. After purchase plan has been purchased, please email the group in the above direction #2 item B with the purchase plan ID number.

Classified EC2 AWS Accounts Standards for IPF Savings Plans

1. All accounts are required to purchase an annual RI buy.

2. Currently only RI purchases are available on the classified AWS associated with IPF.

a. Reserved Instances Purchase Options

i. Reserved Instances provide you with a significant discount compared to On-Demand Instance pricing. In addition, when Reserved Instances are assigned to a specific Availability Zone, they provide a capacity reservation, giving you additional confidence in your ability to launch instances when you need them.

b. Standard and Convertible Reserved Instances Pricing

i. Standard Reserved Instances provide you with a significant discount (up to 72%) compared to On-Demand Instance pricing and can be purchased for a 1-year term. Customers have the flexibility to change the Availability Zone, the instance size, and networking type of their Standard Reserved Instances.

ii. Purchase Convertible Reserved Instances if you need additional flexibility, such as the ability to use different instance families, operating systems, or tenancies over the Reserved Instance term. Convertible Reserved Instances provide you with a significant discount (up to 66%) compared to On-Demand Instances and can be purchased for a 1-year term.

c. AWS provides an RI specific cost calculator below.

i. https://aws.amazon.com/ec2/pricing/reserved-instances/pricing/

1. NOTE: There are calculators on all AWS offerings that are specific to that environment.

a. This calculator should be used as a reference only as rates may very on other AWS offerings.

b. Term length is always 1 year.

c. Payment Options are always set to All Upfront.

d. AWS Billing conductor should be reviewed to show past 12 months of billing data and usage.

i. Allows personnel to understand detailed level of spending information on an account basis.

e. AWS cost explorer can be used for additional data gathering.

i. Custom reports can be created to view EC2 details.

ii. If available Cost Explorer Saved Reports can be used for the following metrics.

1. EC2 running hours.

2. RI utilization

3. RI purchase requests need to be filled out on the IPF_AWS_RI_Purchase_request excel located at the link below.

a. \\gold\office\office02\CIO-T\Non-Records\IPF\NR_1_Working_Folder\4_Engineering_Mgmt\Documents--IPF-CloudManagement\IPF_CostSavings_Documents

i. All fields are mandatory.

b. Once completed the excel document needs to be emailed, in a group, to the below personnel for review.

i. Bayne Jeremy M NGA-IPF USA CTR

ii. Adams Khristopher -Khris- C NGA-IPF USA CIV

iii. Thurau Adam R NGA-IPF USA

4. Approval to purchase will come via email from one of the above Government reviewers.

a. Once approval is in place the purchase needs to be completed ASAP.

b. It is the responsibility of the Account owner to ensure that the purchase takes place according to the approved excel document.

c. An authorized AWS user with “PRGMADMIN” permissions can initiate the AWS purchase via the AWS Console but must follow the steps below.

1. RI’s purchases require a Service+ ticket to the Cloud Ops.

a. Request that RI purchase permissions be added to the PRGMADMIN role for your account.

5. To purchase RI, follow the steps below.

a. Log in to the AWS Management Console.

b. In the Amazon Web Services menu choose “EC2”.

c. In the left navigation pane, choose “Reserved Instances.”

d. Choose “Purchase Reserved Instances.”

e. Using your approved purchase excel worksheet.

i. Select your Reserved Instance type, platform, payment option, instance type, offering class, and term length of 1 year.

ii. Optionally, check the "Only show offerings that reserve capacity" box to select an Availability Zone if you want to reserve capacity.

f. Adjust the quantity of instances to purchase.

g. Confirm your purchase.

h. After purchase plan has been purchased, please email the group in the above direction #3 item B with the RI purchase plan ID number.

IPF AWS Account Standards for Amazon Relational Database Service (RDS) Savings Plans

1. All accounts are required to purchase an annual RI RDS buy.

a. Amazon RDS Reserved Instances provide size flexibility for the MySQL, MariaDB, PostgreSQL, and Amazon Aurora database engines as well as the “Bring your own license” (BYOL) edition of the Oracle database engine. With size flexibility, your RI’s discounted rate will automatically apply to usage of any size in the instance family (using the same database engine).

i. The RI discounted rate will also apply to usage to both Single-AZ and Multi-AZ configurations for the same database engine and instance family.

ii. Example: A db.m4.2xlarge MySQL RI in US East (N. Virginia). The discounted rate of this RI can automatically apply to two db.m4.xlarge MySQL instances without you needing to do anything.

iii. NOTE: Size flexibility does not apply to Microsoft SQL Server and the License Included (LI) edition of Oracle.

a. AWS provides an RDS RI specific cost calculator below.

1. https://aws.amazon.com/rds/pricing/

a. NOTE: There are calculators on all AWS offerings that are specific to that environment.

b. This calculator should be used as a reference only as rates may very on the other AWS offerings.

c. Term length is always 1 year.

d. Payment Options are always set to All Upfront.

b. AWS Billing conductor should be reviewed to show past 12 months of billing data and usage.

i. Allows personnel to understand detailed level of spending information on an account basis.

c. AWS cost explorer can be used for additional data gathering.

i. Custom reports can be created to view RDS details.

ii. If available Cost Explorer Saved Reports can be used for the following metrics.

1. RDS running hours.

2. RI RDS utilization RI purchase requests need to be filled out on the IPF_AWS_RI_RDS_Purchase_request excel located at the link below.

b. \\gold\office\office02\CIO-T\Non-Records\IPF\NR_1_Working_Folder\4_Engineering_Mgmt\Documents--IPF-CloudManagement\IPF_CostSavings_Documents

i. All fields are mandatory.

c. Once completed the excel document needs to be emailed, in a group, to the below personnel for review.

i. Bayne Jeremy M NGA-IPF USA CTR

ii. Adams Khristopher -Khris- C NGA-IPF USA CIV

iii. Thurau Adam R NGA-IPF USA

5. Approval to purchase will come via email from one of the above Government reviewers.

a. Once approval is in place the purchase needs to be completed ASAP.

b. It is the responsibility of the Account owner to ensure that the purchase takes place according to the approved excel document.

c. An authorized AWS user with “PRGMADMIN” permissions can initiate the AWS purchase via the AWS Console but must follow the steps below.

1. RI’s purchases require a Service+ ticket to the Cloud Ops.

a. Request that RI purchase permissions be added to the PRGMADMIN role for your account.

6. To purchase RI, follow the steps below.

a. Sign in to the AWS Management Console.

b. Open the Amazon RDS console.

c. In the navigation pane, choose Reserved instances.

d. Choose Purchase reserved DB instance.

e. For Product description, choose the DB engine and licensing type.

f. For DB instance class, choose the DB instance class.

g. For multi-AZ deployment, choose whether you want a multi-AZ deployment.

h. For Term, 1 year.

i. For Offering type, choose the offering type. After you choose the offering type, you can see the pricing information.

j. Choose Submit. Your reserved DB instance is purchased, then displayed in the Reserved instances list.

k. After purchase plan has been purchased, please email the group in the above direction #3 item B with the RI purchase plan ID number.