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Flexsave for Amazon Web Services

DoiT Flexsave™ enables simplified, automated management of on-demand Amazon Web Services (AWS) compute workloads for cost and agility. It helps to ensure that on-demand compute workloads can be covered by resource commitments and delivers the equivalent savings of applicable AWS 1-year discount rates — without the commitment.

Account types​

To better understand how your business can benefit from Flexsave, you first need to know your account type.

  • resold account: A resold account is paid by a DoiT reseller payer account. It consists of two sub types:

    • consolidated resold account: Your account is a member of one of the three DoiT consolidated billing accounts (payer account ID 561602220360, 017920819041, or 279843869311).

    • dedicated resold account: Your account is on a DoiT reseller payer account other than the three consolidated accounts listed above.

  • SaaS account: A SaaS account is not paid by DoiT reseller payer account. Your account is of this type if you sign up for Flexsave while your organization is not paying for cloud access via DoiT already.

Capabilities​

Flexsave monitors the utilization of your on-demand resources and adjusts the mix of discount mechanisms to maximize your potential savings. Depending on you account type, you get different Flexsave capabilities.

Consolidated resold account​

  • Supported regions: all available regions

  • Supported service: Amazon EC2

  • Supported operating systems: Linux, Windows (including Microsoft SQL Server)

Services not listed above are not eligible for Flexsave, including AWS Fargate, AWS Lambda, Amazon RDS, VMware Cloud on AWS, Amazon ElastiCache and Amazon SageMaker.

Dedicated resold and SaaS account​

Services not listed above are not eligible for Flexsave, including Amazon RDS, VMware Cloud on AWS, Amazon ElastiCache and Amazon SageMaker.

On-Demand Capacity Reservations​

AWS On-Demand Capacity Reservations require zonal reserved instances, while Flexsave only supports AWS regional reserved instances. Consequently, Flexsave does not provide discounts for On-Demand Capacity Reservations.

For customers with a dedicated organization, your unused Capacity Reservations are eligible for Flexsave discounts, similar to how AWS Savings Plans handle them.

See also

EC2 Instance eligibility​

Flexsave discount applies to services that run EC2 On-Demand Instances.

  • For customers on a consolidated resold account, Flexsave allocates capacity for the current month based on utilization during the last 7 days of the previous month. Instances that run for ~90% during that period qualify for Flexsave discount.

  • For customers on a dedicated resold or a SaaS account, to meet the qualification criteria, they must maintain an aggregated hourly on-demand compute spend of at least US$1.05 across all supported services over the past 7 days.

DoiT Flexsave accounts​

DoiT Flexsave accounts are created and owned by DoiT. They contain no workloads but only savings plans.

DoiT Flexsave optimizes your savings by adjusting the blend of plans available to you. If you're on a dedicated resold or a SaaS account, you'll see Flexsave accounts join or leave your AWS Organization whenever your plans are adjusted.

Identify Flexsave accounts​

DoiT Flexsave accounts have account names as fsXXXXX in the AWS Console.

In DoiT Cloud Analytics reports, all the Flexsave accounts added to your AWS organization are aggregated into one single item under the Project/Account name Flexsave. See Flexsave projects/accounts for an example.

Flexsave accounts activities​

DoiT Flexsave accounts join or leave your AWS Organization via actions from the DoiT management role.

When a DoiT Flexsave account leaves your Organization, we clean up the account and delete all the related resources (including default VPCs, roles, policies, security tools, etc.) to ensure the best security posture. The cleanup process may trigger security warnings, for example, AWS CloudTrail logs deleted, AWS GuardDuty detector deleted, or a DeleteServiceLinkedRole request sent. As long as they are from a DoiT Flexsave account, they are not suspicious activities.

AWS Service Control Policies​

Flexsave is compatible with AWS Service Control Policies (SCPs).

If you're on a dedicated resold or a SaaS account and have a policy that denies the organizations:LeaveOrganization or the organizations:DescribeOrganization action, you must add a Condition to make an exception for the DoiT management role.

For example:

{
  "Version": "2012-10-17",
  "Statement": [
    {
      "Effect": "Deny",
      "Action": [
        "organizations:LeaveOrganization",
        "organizations:DescribeOrganization"
      ],
      "Resource": "*",
      "Condition": {
        "ArnNotEquals": {
          "aws:PrincipalArn": "arn:aws:iam::*:role/doitintl-mgmt-role"
        }
      }
    }
  ]
}

FAQ​

See also

Flexsave overview: FAQ

What changes should I expect in AWS Console?​

For customers on a dedicated resold or a SaaS account, Flexsave dynamically adds/removes AWS accounts (with account names like fsXXXXX) to/from your AWS Organization.

When Flexsave accounts are added to your AWS organization, you may see savings in the AWS Cost Explorer that do not show in your DoiT Cloud Analytics reports.

Some AWS fees (e.g., AWS Support Plans, taxes, and so on) are proportional to your cloud spend. When we attach Flexsave accounts to your AWS organization, we reduce your overall cloud spend, which may also reduce other AWS fees.

Note

AWS Cost Explorer and DoiT Cloud Analytics behave differently. If your DoiT reports are not configured to account for reduced AWS fees, you may notice higher savings in the AWS Cost Explorer than in your DoiT reports.

Can I use Flexsave if I already have commitments from AWS?​

Yes, you can.

Flexsave works exclusively with your on-demand compute usage and excludes anything already covered by your own commitments.

In addition, if you're on a resold account, you also get AWS EDP discounts (or other discounts from DoiT if applicable)-adjusted prices on Flexsave.

How soon after enabling Flexsave should I see the savings?​

Customers on a dedicated resold or a SaaS account should expect to see savings within 72 hours.

Customers on a consolidated resold account should expect to see savings in the first week of the subsequent month. Your savings are delayed because we need to wait for AWS to release your billing data at the end of the month. We need your most recent billing data to analyze resource utilization and determine the optimal savings strategy.

Why aren't my savings showing up?​

Savings always show with a three-day delay. For example, if today were the 23rd day of the month, your savings would be accurate to the 20th. At the beginning of a new month, the savings will show on the 4th day of the month.

Can I use Flexsave with discount sharing disabled?​

Unfortunately, no.

Flexsave requires customers on dedicated resold or SaaS accounts to enable Reserved instances and Savings Plans discount sharing in their AWS billing preferences.

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