An example of Vantage Cost Recommendations
Today, Vantage announces the launch of automated cost savings recommendations for all users with connected AWS accounts. Vantage will now automatically profile AWS account accrued costs and individual AWS resources to provide recommendations for how to save money. Upon finding possible savings, Vantage will surface a recommendation in the Vantage console which will give a description of the action to take, what AWS services and resources it's related to, the amount of money Vantage believes you can save, and give the ability to archive the recommendation. Vantage Cost Recommendations have already found current customers up to 32% savings.
Previously, customers would have to understand complex AWS pricing tiers and analyze their infrastructure periodically to understand if there were opportunities for reducing costs. In many cases, customers were unaware of potential cost savings measures due to the complexity of AWS and corresponding infrastructure. Additionally, customers prefer to spend time and focus on building their business rather than spending time looking for ways to save money and are not cloud cost experts.
Now, users can rely on Vantage to automatically surface cost recommendations to them at no additional cost. Cost Recommendations will not only encompass categories like Savings Plans and Reserved Instances but also profile specific AWS service configurations and resources where right-sizing or other measures can be taken to save money. As often as Vantage syncs with AWS accounts, it will look for cost recommendations on a resource-specific basis. Additionally, every week Vantage will look at all accrued costs for potential account-wide savings.
"At Avenue, we're focused on our customer base and building our product, so we don't have a lot of time to look at cost optimization directly. Since using Vantage Cost Recommendations, it feels like there's a seasoned AWS engineer on our team who knows all the hidden tricks to optimize our infrastructure (even what's available in the free tier!)" said Jeff Barg, Co-Founder and CTO of Avenue.
Vantage Cost Recommendations are available for all users in the Vantage console and can be seen directly at https://console.vantage.sh/recommendations. Below is a list of frequently asked questions in regard to Cost Recommendations.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is being launched today?
Today, Vantage is launching Cost Recommendations which surface ways for users to save money on AWS. Vantage will automatically profile AWS accounts on a regular basis and inform users of potential ways of saving money.
Who has access to Cost Recommendations?
Cost Recommendations are available to all users on Vantage with connected AWS accounts, including users in the free tier.
How much does this cost?
There is no additional cost to Vantage users for Cost Recommendations. You can see this reflected on our pricing page.
What are some examples of Cost Recommendations?
Below are some example Cost Recommendation categories that Vantage will look for. Note that we add new Cost Recommendation categories over time so this list will grow.
- Savings Plans: Vantage will look at your AWS infrastructure on a weekly basis and provide Savings Plans recommendations tailored to your actual usage of EC2, Fargate, and Lambda.
- Reserved Instances: Vantage will recommend Reserved Instances for services like RDS, Elasticache, ElasticSearch, and more with specific Reserved Instances to purchase.
- Stranded Resources: Vantage will look for stranded resources such as EBS Volumes, IP addresses, and more to ensure you've cleaned up everything you're not using.
- Storage Optimizations: Vantage will look at EBS Volumes you're using to provide optimization recommendations as well as S3 object type usage to recommend things like changing EBS volumes or enabling S3 Intelligent-Tiering.
- Much more: There are a variety of other checks that Vantage has now and plans to add in the near future for additional Cost Recommendations. If you have a specific AWS service you're looking to optimize please contact support@vantage.sh and we can ensure your use cases are covered.
How often are Cost Recommendations generated?
Vantage will check for resource-specific Cost Recommendations as often as you sync your account. Additionally, Vantage will look at all accrued costs each week and recommend more holistic recommendations account-wide for things like Savings Plans or Reserved Instances.
I am a Vantage user but I don’t see any Cost Recommendations. What is happening?
There are two possible things causing this: (1) Vantage has not yet run the process for finding Cost Recommendations for your account yet and you can check back later (2) your account is well-optimized from an AWS cost perspective and there are no recommendations for you to review.
In either case, Vantage will continue to monitor your AWS account for all changes and be sure to surface Cost Recommendations to you as it finds them.
How does this differ from other cost optimization tools?
We have found that pure cost optimization platforms are largely targeting only financial engineering related cost recommendations such as Savings Plans and Reserved Instances. Vantage will be looking at your infrastructure on a per-resource basis to be able to surface deeper, additional cost recommendations that these platforms offer. In short, Vantage is offering a superset of what what pure cost optimization platforms provide and does this at no additional cost to you.
Vantage is also offering these features to you at no additional cost whereas other platforms tend to charge considerable fees.
I am a paying customer who is missing certain IAM permissions on my account for Vantage to surface Cost Recommendations. What should I do?
Vantage has a list of IAM permissions it needs to surface certain Cost Recommendations. In the event that the IAM role is missing certain permissions, the top of the Cost Recommendations page will inform you of the permissions Vantage is missing and direct you to the Vantage IAM permissions page to get it resolved. Typically this takes under a minute.
I see both “Active” and “Archived” Cost Recommendations—what does this mean?
All Cost Recommendations that Vantage provides will start in an "Active" state. If you don't care to see a recommendation either because it isn't meaningful to you or you've taken action on it, you may archive the recommendation which just moves it to the Archive view. This won't remove the recommendation from your account but simply gets it out of the way so you can always see the most relevant recommendations.
Can Vantage take automated actions to automatically make the suggested change?
Not at this time. Vantage will not make changes to your infrastructure on your behalf. That being said we are looking at providing content and examples for how to make this as seamless as possible for Vantage users.
I am part of a team on Vantage, will everyone have access to Cost Recommendations?
Yes. Everyone on your team will have access to Cost Recommendations.
I don’t understand some of the Cost Recommendations Vantage is surfacing to me—will Vantage explain what they are to me in the context of my account or help me implement them?
Yes. Please contact us through Intercom on the Vantage Console in the bottom right of the screen or email support@vantage.sh and we will help as best we can.
I have implemented some of the Cost Recommendations which has caused my AWS costs to go down. As a result, may I downgrade my Vantage tier accordingly?
Yes. We are expecting that certain customers in our Pro tier may drop down to our free tier and that customers in our Business tier may drop down to our Pro tier. If Cost Recommendations have reduced your costs enough for the lower tier, you may downgrade your Vantage account accordingly. Please note that Vantage tier enforcement is imposed based off of the prior month's accrued costs—so there is some delay.
