Amazon EC2 reserved instances are popular and have been so over the last decade since they were announced in 2009. Reserved instances gave users a new way to consume EC2 on AWS. Recently AWS has announced a new savings plan for their compute services similar to how they bill reserve instances.
Amazon EC2 reserved instances are popular and have been so over the last decade since they were announced in 2009. Reserved instances gave users a new way to consume EC2 on AWS. Recently AWS has announced a new savings plan for their compute services similar to how they bill reserve instances.
Reserve instances (RIs) work by offering a discount by the user purchasing the resources for a prolonged period of time, typically 1 to 3 years. Unlike their on-demand counterparts, users have to pay for the resources whether they are used or not. So with a little planning, organizations can save quite a bit taking this route. And since the landscape is dynamic by nature, AWS has made updates to make reserved instances more flexible with things like reginal benefits, convertible RIs (allowing users to change the OS or instance type when needed), and instance size flexibility.
Now AWS is moving Reserved Instances beyond EC2 to their compute services as well. Basically, users can reserve a set amount of compute services for a period of 1 to 3 years for a discount. If they happen to go over the set amount, they will then be charge the On Demand (and higher) price. Now AWS offers two savings plans:
- Compute Savings Plans provide the most flexibility and help to reduce costs by up to 66% (just like Convertible RIs). The plans automatically apply to any EC2 instance regardless of region, instance family, operating system, or tenancy, including those that are part of EMR, ECS, or EKS clusters, or launched by Fargate. For example, users can shift from C4 to C5 instances, move a workload from Dublin to London, or migrate from EC2 to Fargate, benefiting from Savings Plan prices along the way, without having to do anything.
- EC2 Instance Savings Plans apply to a specific instance family within a region and provide the largest discount (up to 72%, just like Standard RIs). Just like with RIs, the savings plan covers usage of different sizes of the same instance type (such as a c5.4xlarge or c5.large) throughout a region. Users can even switch from Windows to Linux while continuing to benefit, without having to make any changes to their savings plan.
Interested parties can leverage AWS Cost Explorer to help them choose the best savings plan for their needs.
Availability
The new savings plans are available now in all AWS regions outside of China.
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