This article provides an overview of the configuration process and settings page for automatically purchasing AWS Savings Plans (SPs).
By enabling this setting, you can automate SP purchases, reduce manual decision-making and ordering workload, and achieve more cost-efficient operations.
Purchase Settings
Configuration Steps:
Select the Plan Type: Choose either Compute or EC2.
Select the Purchasing Account: Choose between a Managed Account or a Member Account.
For Managed Accounts, it is assumed that the sharing setting is enabled. The SPs will be purchased and applied to the member accounts under the managed account.
For Member Accounts, SPs will be purchased individually for each member account.
Term: You can choose either a 1-year or 3-year term. A 1-year term is generally recommended.
Payment Option: Select your preferred payment method:
All Upfront
Partial Upfront
Monthly
Lookback Period: This defines the time range of historical data used to calculate eligible instances for purchase:
7 days
30 days
60 days
Instance Family: Select the target instance family for SP purchases. (Not required for Compute SPs.)
Budget:
Set a budget cap for the total SP purchase. For example, if you set it to $1,00K the system will optimize the purchase within that limit.
Approval Settings:
If enabled, the system will not purchase SPs automatically. Instead, it will notify you when eligible SPs are available and require your approval before proceeding.
Once all the settings are configured, you will be directed to a confirmation screen. If everything looks correct, click Simulate to proceed.
Displays estimated savings and recommendation details based on your settings.
By clicking “Analysis Data”, you can view more detailed insights, including the historical usage data referenced to generate the recommendations.
After reviewing the simulation results, click “Confirm” if everything looks correct.
If Approval is enabled, the system will notify you when eligible SPs are available, and no purchases will be made without explicit approval.
If Approval is disabled, the SPs will be purchased automatically based on the simulation.
With that, the setup is complete—thank you for your efforts!
Note on Step ②:
Purchasing via a Managed Account allows for broader application of SPs across accounts, enabling more aggressive purchasing and cost savings. However, it comes with the trade-off of reduced visibility and granularity in managing savings at the individual account level.