Billing and Costs

Note:

This topic describes features that are available in the new design framework for the user interface. If you have not switched to the new framework, click New Feature Toggle button in the navigation bar of the user interface and then turn on the toggle. For more information, see Design Framework for the User Interface.

As you work with Turbonomic, you can set up costs that Turbonomic uses in its cost analysis.

AWS Discounts - Reserved Instances

Configure a purchase profile. A purchase profile determines the costs that Turbonomic will use for all discount purchase decisions in your environment. As it sees opportunities to move workloads to another term, Turbonomic determines the costs based on the profile, and includes cost information in action descriptions. Turbonomic also uses this information to calculate projected changes in costs.

The following settings for your purchase profile apply to your global AWS environment.

Offering class

Choose the offering class that corresponds to the RI types that you typically use in your environment.
Term

Choose the payment terms for your discounts. Typically, longer term payment plans cost less per year.
Payment

Choose your payment option.
- All upfront – You make full payment at the start of the term.
- Partial upfront – You make a portion of the payment at the start of the term, with the remain cost paid at an hourly rate.
- No upfront – You pay at an hourly rate for the duration of the term.

AWS Discounts - Compute Savings Plans

Note:

To see Compute Savings Plans settings in the Billing and Costs page, use the new design framework. In the navigation bar of the user interface, click New design framework icon and then turn on the toggle. These settings are not visible in the old framework.

If your discount inventory only includes Compute Savings Plans, turn on this toggle so that Turbonomic can calculate the cost impact of VM scale actions based on your current inventory. Turbonomic uses the published rates for Compute Savings Plans in its calculations. If your inventory also includes Reserved Instances, turn off this toggle.

Before turning on the toggle, be sure that the policies for the IAM user or IAM role that you set up for Turbonomic include the savingsplans:DescribeSavingsPlansOfferingRates permission. This feature does not work without that permission.

After you set the permission, wait about an hour for Turbonomic to discover your Compute Savings Plans rates. You can then turn on the toggle and configure the following settings for your purchase profile. These settings apply to your global AWS environment.

Term

Choose the payment terms for your discounts. Typically, longer term payment plans cost less per year.
Payment

Choose your payment option.
- All upfront – You make full payment at the start of the term.
- Partial upfront – You make a portion of the payment at the start of the term, with the remain cost paid at an hourly rate.
- No upfront – You pay at an hourly rate for the duration of the term.

In the next analysis cycle, Turbonomic considers Compute Savings Plans coverage when calculating the effective cost of a VM scale action. When you view the Action Details page for an action, the Cost Impact section shows the coverage and effective cost, before and after action execution.

Note:

In the Savings or Cumulative Savings charts, actual savings that result from executing scale actions reflect savings in on-demand cost.

Azure Discounts

Turbonomic supports Azure reservations.

Choose the payment terms for your discounts. Typically, longer term payment plans cost less per year.

This setting applies to your global Azure environment and determines the costs that Turbonomic will use for all discount purchase decisions in your environment. As it sees opportunities to move workloads to another term, Turbonomic determines the costs based on the term, and includes cost information in action descriptions. Turbonomic also uses this information to calculate projected changes in costs.

Price Adjustment

Cloud providers can offer their own price lists, including special costs for services or discounts for workloads. However, Turbonomic does not discover these adjustments. For example, to reflect any AWS discounted prices in Turbonomic, you must manually configure price adjustments. To configure price adjustments for a specific billing family, you must add the corresponding management account as an AWS target in the Target Configuration page.

Turbonomic applies these price adjustments to:

Costs for workload template families
Costs for services, including bandwidth, VM licenses, AWS CloudWatch, and AWS DynamoDB

If price adjustments are not set, Turbonomic will show on-demand pricing, which could result in incorrect cost information in Turbonomic.

Configure the following settings:

Setting	Instructions
Name	Specify a name.
Billing groups	Click Billing groups and then choose the billing group for the scope of this adjustment. A billing group is a set of AWS accounts that are consolidated into a single billing schedule. To consolidate billing, AWS supports billing families of AWS accounts, where there is a management account and member accounts. Turbonomic lists each billing family as a billing group. Note: If a particular billing family is missing in the list of billing groups, check if you have added the corresponding management account as an AWS target in the Target Configuration page. This account must be added in order for the billing family to display in the list.
Discount adjustment	Specify a percentage of adjustment between 0 and 99.99%. For any costs within the adjustment scope, Turbonomic will apply this percentage as it calculates the optimal workload capacity and placement. After you configure an adjustment, Turbonomic applies it to pricing in the selected scope.
Price overrides	The discount adjustment percentage you just specified applies as a default in the adjustment scope. However, you might have negotiated different prices for specific services or template families in your cloud environment. To configure these special prices, click Price overrides. For details, see AWS Price Override.

Points to consider:

Turbonomic uses the adjustments that you configure to display costs in the user interface. However, the values for hourly cost per entity, total hourly cost, total monthly cost, or total yearly cost can show inaccuracies on the order of a fraction of a percent. This is due to rounding when calculating the adjusted cost per entity.
In AWS environments, Turbonomic does not apply any discounts or other price adjustments to spot compute costs.
To use a price adjustment with a given billing group, you must increase the memory allocated to the VM that hosts your Turbonomic instance. Turbonomic requires that you provide a minimum amount of memory when you install the product. To use price adjustments, IBM recommends that you increase the allocated memory as follows:
- For the first price adjustment assigned to one or more billing groups, increase by 4 GB.
- For each subsequent price adjustment assigned to one or more billing groups, increase by an additional 1 GB.
Whenever you add, edit, or remove a price adjustment that is in use, you must allow sufficient time for Turbonomic to fully discover all of the affected environment, and to propagate the changes throughout that environment. In an average environment, this can take up to 30 minutes. As an alternative, you can manually execute rediscovery for the affected cloud subscription or account.

Currency

By default, Turbonomic uses the dollar symbol ($) when displaying the costs and savings that it discovers or calculates for your cloud workloads. You can set a different symbol to match your preferred currency. For example, if your cloud provider bills you in euros, change the currency symbol to €.

Turbonomic saves your preference in the local storage of the browser that you used to access the user interface. It reverts to the default symbol if you use another browser or view the user interface in incognito/private mode.

Currency symbols are for display purposes only. Turbonomic does not convert monetary amounts when you switch symbols.

Note:

For Azure reservations, Turbonomic can discover costs in non-US dollar currencies. For more information, see this topic.