Viewing commercial software license recommendations - Amazon Compute Optimizer
Finding classificationsFinding reasonsEstimated monthly savings and savings opportunityInferred workload typesCompare current license edition with recommended license editionUtilization graphsViewing recommendations for commercial software licensesViewing details of a commercial software license recommendation
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Viewing commercial software license recommendations

Amazon Compute Optimizer generates license recommendations for commercial software that run on Amazon EC2. These recommendations are displayed on the following pages of the Compute Optimizer console.

The Recommendations for commercial software licenses page lists the following information for each of your EC2 instances with licenses.

  • Finding classifications

  • Finding reasons

  • Estimated monthly savings

  • Savings opportunity

  • On-Demand prices

  • BYOL hourly license prices

The recommendations from Compute Optimizer are listed next to each of your EC2 instances with commercial software licenses. The information that's provided includes recommended saving opportunities, EC2 instance On-Demand prices, and hourly bring your own license (BYOL) prices. This information can help you decide if you should down-size your license edition. For more information about how to view your license recommendations for commercial software, see Viewing recommendations for commercial software licenses.

Note

The recommendations are refreshed daily and they can take up to 24 hours to generate. Keep in mind that Compute Optimizer requires 24 hours of metrics in the past 14 days to generate license recommendations. For more information, see Commercial software license requirements.

The License details page provides the following information for your license recommendation:

  • Your current license settings and Compute Optimizer's recommended licence configurations. Use the table to compare your current license configurations, such as edition, model, and number of instance cores, with Compute Optimizer recommendations.

  • Use the utilization graphs to access the utilization of the current license during the analysis period.

For more information about how to view the details for your license recommendation, see Viewing details of a commercial software license recommendation.

Finding classifications

The Findings column on the Commercial software license recommendations page provides a summary of how each of your licenses performed during the analyzed period.

The following findings classifications apply to Microsoft SQL Server licenses.

Classification Description

Insufficient metrics

When Compute Optimizer detects that your CloudWatch Application Insights isn't enabled or is enabled with insufficient permissions. Compute Optimizer displays a finding reason of InvalidCloudwatchApplicationInsights or CloudwatchApplicationInsightsError.

Not optimized

When Compute Optimizer detects that your EC2 infrastructure isn't using any of the Microsoft SQL server license features you're paying for, a license is considered not optimized. Compute Optimizer displays a finding reason of LicenseOverprovisioned. A license that isn't optimized might result in unnecessary additional costs.

Optimized

When the license for your SQL server database meets your performance requirements, the license is considered optimized.

For more information about these finding classifications, see Finding reasons.

Finding reasons

The Finding reasons column on the EC2 instances recommendations and EC2 instance details pages shows which specification of an instance is under-provisioned or over-provisioned.

The following finding reasons apply to Microsoft SQL server license recommendations.

Finding reason Description

LicenseOverprovisioned

A license is considered over-provisioned when any of the current license features aren't in use. CloudWatch Application Insights analyzes the mssql_enterprise_features_used metric to identify this.

If your license is over-provisioned, you can consider downgrading your Microsoft SQL Server license. If you meet certain eligibility requirements you can downgrade from SQL Server Enterprise edition to SQL Server Standard edition, or Developer edition if it is a non-production workload. For more information, see Downgrade your Microsoft SQL Server edition in the Microsoft SQL Server on Amazon EC2 User Guide.

InvalidCloudwatchApplicationInsights

The backend exporter of your CloudWatch Application Insights isn't configured properly. For more information about how to configure CloudWatch Application Insights, see Get started with Amazon CloudWatch Application Insights in the Amazon CloudWatch User Guide.

CloudwatchApplicationInsightsError

You have configured CloudWatch Application Insights but it hasn't identified the number of Enterprise edition features in use. It can take a few hours to identify the features. If the features aren't identified after a few hours, contact Amazon Web Services Support.

Estimated monthly savings and savings opportunity

The Estimated monthly savings (On-Demand) column lists the approximate monthly cost savings after you downgrade your license edition based on Compute Optimizer’s recommendations. To calculate this, Compute Optimizer multiplies the savings per hour by the estimated monthly running hours.

The Savings opportunity (%) column lists the percentage difference between your current Microsoft SQL server license and Compute Optimizer’s recommended license. The Bring Your Own License (BYOL) savings calculation is based on the license price. The License Included savings calculation is based on the On-Demand pricing.

Important

Savings opportunity data requires that you opt in to Cost Explorer, as well as activate Receive Amazon EC2 resource recommendations in the Cost Explorer preferences page. That creates a connection between Cost Explorer and Compute Optimizer. With this connection, Cost Explorer generates savings estimates considering the price of existing resources, the price of recommended resources, and historical usage data. Estimated monthly savings reflects the projected dollar savings associated with each of the recommendations generated. For more information, see Enabling Cost Explorer and Optimizing your cost with Rightsizing Recommendations in the Cost Management User Guide.

Inferred workload types

Inferred workload type is a feature that's included with Amazon Compute Optimizer that infers the applications that might be running on your Amazon resources, such as EC2 instances and Auto Scaling groups. Inferred workload type does this by analyzing the attributes of your resources. These resources include resource names, tags, and configuration. Compute Optimizer currently can infer if your instances are running Amazon EMR, Apache Cassandra, Apache Hadoop, NGINX, or PostgreSQL. By inferring the applications that are running on your instances, Compute Optimizer can identify the effort to migrate your workloads from x86-based instance types to Arm-based Amazon Graviton instances types. By default, the inferred workload type feature is activated. But, you can create a recommendation preference to deactivate the feature.

Compare current license edition with recommended license edition

On the License details page, compare the configurations of your current license edition with Compute Optimizer’s recommended license edition. The following table provides a description for each column section in the console.

Column Description

License edition

The current license edtion and the recommended license edition. For example, Enterprise, Standard, and Free.

Instance On-Demand price

The current and recommended On-Demand instance prices.

BYOL price (hourly)

The current and recommended Bring your own license (BYOL) hourly price.

Estimated monthly savings

The approximate monthly cost savings after you downgrade your license edition based on Compute Optimizer’s recommendations. For more information, see Estimated monthly savings and savings opportunity.

Savings opportunity (%)

The percentage difference between your current Microsoft SQL server license and Compute Optimizer’s recommended license. For more information, see Estimated monthly savings and savings opportunity.

Instance cores

The current and recommended number of physical cores for an instance. Number of instance cores are used in licensing calculations.

Utilization graphs

The License details page displays current resource utilization of the current commercial software license. The graph only displays the number of Enterprise editon features that were used data over the analysis period.

You can change the graphs to display data for the last 24 hours, three days, one week, or two weeks.

Viewing recommendations for commercial software licenses

Use the following procedure to access the Recommendations for commercial software licenses page.

  1. Open the Compute Optimizer console at https://console.amazonaws.cn/compute-optimizer/.

  2. Choose Licenses in the navigation pane.

  3. (Optional) You can also access the license recommendations from the EC2 instances page. To do this, first select the Filter by one or more properties. From the dropdown list that appears, choose the Inferred workload type property and then choose the Inferred workload type = SQL Server value.

    Note

    The current licenses listed are from the Amazon Web Services Region that is currently selected, in the selected account.

  4. You can perform the following actions on the recommendations for commercial software licenses page:

    • Filter recommendations by Amazon Web Services Regions, Findings, or Finding reasons. To do this, first select the Filter by one or more properties text box. Then, choose the property and a value in the dropdown list that appears.

    • Filter your recommendations by tags. To do this, select the Tag key or Tag value text box. Then, enter the key or value you want to filter your licesne recommendations by.

      For example, to find all recommendations that have a tag with the key of Owner and the value of TeamA, specify tag:Owner for the filter name and TeamA for the filter value.

    • View recommendations for functions in another account. To do this, choose Account, and then select a different account ID.

      Note

      If you're signed in to a management account of an organization and trusted access with Compute Optimizer is enabled, you can view recommendations for resources in other accounts. For more information, see Accounts supported by Compute Optimizer and Compute Optimizer and Amazon Organizations trusted access.

    • Clear the selected filters. To do this, choose Clear filters next to the filter.

Viewing details of a commercial software license recommendation

Use the following procedure to access the License details page, and view details of a specific license recommendation.

  1. Open the Compute Optimizer console at https://console.amazonaws.cn/compute-optimizer/.

  2. Choose Licenses in the navigation pane.

  3. Choose the Instance ID you want to view detailed information.

  4. You can perform the following actions on the details page:

    • On the utilization graphs, you can hover over the graph to see exact values on specific dates over the analysis period.

    • To change the time range of the graphs, choose Time Range, and then choose Last 24 hours, Last 3 days, Last week, or Last 2 weeks.

      Choosing a shorter time range displays the data points at a higher granularity, which provides a higher level of detail.

    • To change the statistic value of the graphs, choose Statistics, and then choose Average or Maximum.