
New – Savings Plans for AWS Compute Services - jeffbarr
https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/aws/new-savings-plans-for-aws-compute-services/
======
blaisio
The code for the AWS billing system must be glorious. There are so many ways
to pay for things, changing constantly, with an enormous number of accounts
and even a number or ways to get credits back due to outages, customer
support, or discount codes. And they have to account for internal Amazon use
too. And bugs can really only be caught by people reimplementing parts of the
system to make sure they get the same results.

~~~
gtirloni
I wouldn't say glorious but if it's anything like telecom billing system, I'm
glad I don't work with them anymore.

~~~
stevekemp
One of my earliest jobs was working for a mobile-phone billing company, in
Scotland.

Every day we'd use UUCP to copy billing-records from random-systems to a
central host, running SCO Unixware. Then the daily "billing run" would total,
reconcile, and massage the data.

The result of the processing would be a pile of CSV files which would then get
further massaged by a collection of Perl scripts.

Days I definitely do not miss!

~~~
abraae
I did some consulting for a Telco on their billing run. It ran on a very, very
large computer for its day. The run typically took 16+ hours, sometimes as
many as 22 hours, leading to some very white knuckle moments when it
threatened to delay the start of the next day's run.

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ecarlin
AWS soft launched Savings Plans in the AWS Console earlier today. We played
with it, made purchases, read the docs, and wrote up our thoughts here -
[https://www.prosperops.com/blog/aws-savings-
plans/](https://www.prosperops.com/blog/aws-savings-plans/)

~~~
sandGorgon
thanks! this was very useful

~~~
ecarlin
Glad it helped!

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manojlds
Take on this by Corey Quinn - [https://www.lastweekinaws.com/blog/aws-begins-
sunsetting-ris...](https://www.lastweekinaws.com/blog/aws-begins-sunsetting-
ris-replaces-them-with-something-much-much-better/)

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dajonker
Cloud computing gets cheaper all the time, why should you commit to spending a
certain amount of money? This seems like just another way for AWS to increase
vendor lock-in and profits through making complicated payment structures that
make people believe they're better off.

~~~
scarface74
This was always the drawback of RIs. You had to risk that your instance type
would get cheaper over the term of the reservation. Now your “risk” is that
your business will shrink or that your spend will get so much cheaper over
three years that you lose money.

Getting a discount from a vendor if you commit to spend more over a period of
years and signing long term contracts is standard practice.

And despite all of the cries of “lock-in” at a certain scale, you’re always
for all practical purposes, “locked in” to your infrastructure. Very few
decision makers want to take on a migration that’s not part of a merger. The
rewards are too slim and the risk of regressions are too high.

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MrStonedOne
Jeff: Tip for future posts of this nature: a link to a help page or other
unauthenticated page showing the actual plans would be helpful. I'm on my
phone and can't auth to my aws account to explore the new system but would
have loved to take a peek at what the actual plans and pricing are. I'm sure
their are other techys on here in the same boat.

Your article _implies_ that the only way to see this info is to login to your
was console but you can't assume everybody who would be interested in
switching to aws now that you have this system has one or would bother to set
one up to explore this feature. And I'm sure there does exist some public
listing I'm just pointing out how better this could have been communicated.

~~~
9NRtKyP4
Here’s a link to the actual pricing:
[https://aws.amazon.com/savingsplans/pricing/](https://aws.amazon.com/savingsplans/pricing/)

This doesn’t show up for me when googling “AWS savings plan pricing”.

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leetrout
This looks like a direct response to Google’s pricing and a lot better than
the existing reserved instances pricing.

~~~
ecarlin
I think so. GCP Committed Use Discounts allow you to commit in aggregate in
terms of vCPU and Memory, but you are still constrained by region and the
commits are bifurcated (gen 1, gen 2, custom, etc.). Savings Plans are dollar
based so they automatically float to any region and instance. Way better than
Committed Use Discounts imo.

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kuviaq
FWIW: Oracle Cloud has been using this pricing model since day 1, except it
extends to all services, not just compute:
[https://docs.oracle.com/en/cloud/get-
started/subscriptions-c...](https://docs.oracle.com/en/cloud/get-
started/subscriptions-cloud/csgsg/universal-credits.html)

(Disclaimer, I work at OCI)

~~~
debaserab2
Oh cool. What’s Oracle Cloud?

~~~
abrookewood
I tried really hard not to upvote this ...

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boyd
Does anybody know if (and how) this applies to spot instances? None of the
language seems to _exclude_ application to spot prices, though I realize the
use-it-or-lose-it nature of these discounts has some tensions with bursty spot
workflows.

~~~
manojlds
This is equivalent to RI right, so won't apply to spot. Instances now have On-
demand, Savings Plan and Spot pricing.

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ericand
The compute plan is a big deal (meaning important not cost break although that
too). The inflexibility of RIs really hurts and makes it hard to actually
benefit from the savings. This doesn't quite match Google's approach but it is
much simpler to understand.

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manojlds
Compute Savings Plans applies to Fargate as well.

~~~
nnx
Nice. Really wish it would apply to Lambda too. Or that Lambda have another
kind of reserved capacity plan (similar to DynamoDB perhaps).

~~~
discodave
I don't think it's likely happening for Lambda anytime soon. I can neither
confirm, nor deny that I know anything about the underlying costs for Lambda.

Source: Ex-AWS employee.

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j4mie
Any plans to launch this for RDS?

~~~
ecarlin
Because the broad feature is called Savings Plans with two initial options of
Compute and EC2 Instance, I have to believe AWS will at some point release a
Database Savings Plan, a Storage Savings Plan, etc. As with RIs, the compute
team goes first and the other service teams follow.

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herostratus101
Very cool that they're offering this.

They should also create a marketplace for selling your remaining committed
funds at a discount. That would be a REALLY bold, pro-customer move.

~~~
reilly3000
They already have that in place for reserved instances:
[https://aws.amazon.com/ec2/purchasing-options/reserved-
insta...](https://aws.amazon.com/ec2/purchasing-options/reserved-
instances/marketplace/) I hope they expand it to these savings plans too.

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sandGorgon
basically this is GCP style Committed Use discounts for AWS.

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babaganoosh89
Looks interesting, but reserved instances seems like effectively the same
thing except you have a way out through selling your RI's.

~~~
ericand
Getting a way out by selling your RIs was important due to there
inflexibility. I think those who feel they may want that could opt for the
compute plan which is useful as long as you use EC2 in any form.

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kingbirdy
This just seems like a less flexible alternative to RIs for those who don't
want to bother purchasing them.

~~~
ericand
How I is it less flexible? The compute plan is certainly more flexible as it
can be used on any region and any instance type, right?

~~~
dickeytk
Because it can't be resold? [https://aws.amazon.com/ec2/purchasing-
options/reserved-insta...](https://aws.amazon.com/ec2/purchasing-
options/reserved-instances/marketplace/)

Maybe? It seems more "flexible" to me personally

~~~
ecarlin
Savings Plans will always match as long as there is usage somewhere and you're
not overcommitted. Standard RIs can get mismatched even with other uncovered
usage, but can be disposed of via the RI Marketplace (that of course assumes
there is a buyer out there somewhere). Once you make a Savings Plan commit,
you are stuck with it. They have different "benefits".

