AWS Reserved Instances

Reserved instances are a way to purchase the use of AWS resources at a discounted rate. In addition to securing a discount, you are also securing capacity within the availability zone of your choice.

Kion helps you make the most of your reserved instances by not only showing you exactly how many of your hours you have used, but by showing you how your reserved instances are utilized across all of your projects and accounts. We also surface the math that goes in to calculating reserved instance rates, making it easy to right-size and identify potential savings.

You can also create enforcements within Kion to alert you when you cross usage thresholds and when expiration dates are coming up, so you can make sure you make the most of everything you paid for.

Reserved instances are purchased in AWS. For information on purchasing, see Amazon's article How to Purchase Reserved Instances. For information on reserved instance pricing, limits, and application, see Amazon's article Reserved Instances.

Enabling Reserved Instances in Kion

Kion automatically detects when your accounts use reserved instance funding. Once the reserved instances setting is enabled in Kion, you don't have to add anything else to begin seeing data.

To enable reserved instances in Kion:

1. Navigate to System Settings > Reserved Instances.
2. Enable Allow Kion to display reserved instance information.
3. Click Update Settings.
4. Click Reprocess CUR. This updates your billing data with new data columns and reprocess your cost and usage reports. This is recommended for accurate historical data.

If you have an AWS account that uses your reserved instances that is not managed in Kion, we will not have data on the hours used by that account. In this case, Kion reports would show underutilized hours when you have actually used all of your hours. To avoid partial data and inaccurate reports, it is best to manage all of your accounts using reserved instances in Kion.

Monitoring Your Reserved Instances

Navigate to Cloud Resources > Reserved Instances to see data on your reserved instances. Here, you can see general information about all of your reserved instances, including how many hours have been used over the timeframe, an expiration date, the billing source the reserved instance is tied to, and the origin account that the reserved instance was purchased under. Hover over the Usage tracker to see the last time your data was synced. By default, we sync once a day at midnight.

If you click the name of a reserved instance in the reserved instances list, you can see more detailed information about the reserved instance, including total asset value, effective hourly rate, fees, and potential savings. You can edit the name or description of the reserved instance by clicking the ellipsis menu in the top right and selecting Manage Reserved Instance.

Below the details section, there is a table showing the accounts pulling from the reserved instance. This is helpful to see how the reserved instance is being utilized across accounts. Click the filter icon above the table to filter by account, project, OU, or timeframe. Filtering by timeframe can be particularly helpful in identifying spikes and optimizing your usage.

You can also view reserved instances by account, OU, or project by navigating to the resource's details page and clicking Financials > Reserved Instances . Here, you can see a list of the reserved instances the resource has used. For each reserved instance in the list, you can see how many hours this specific resource has used, how many hours have been used in total by all resources, and how any hours are remaining. When viewing this tab on an OU or project, you can also see usage by all descendent AWS accounts.

Enforcements for Reserved Instances

There are two types of enforcements available for reserved instances:

• Usage. This enforcement can be based off of the used total or remaining total percentage of hours for the reserved instance. For example, you could create a used total enforcement to notify you when you have used 90% of your reserved instance, or you could set a remaining total to notify you when you have 10% of your total hours remaining.
• Relative Time. Use this enforcement to keep track of the expiration dates of your reserved instances. Enter when you would like to receive a notification about the reserved instance's expiration date in days or months.

To add an enforcement to a reserved instance:

1. Navigate to Cloud Resources > Reserved instances.
2. Click the name a reserved instance.
3. Click the Enforcements tab.
4. Click Add an Enforcement.
5. Select the type of enforcement type you want to create.
6. Enter the threshold that will trigger the enforcement.
7. Select users and user groups to notify when the enforcement is triggered.
8. (Optional) Add a description of the enforcement.
9. Click Save.