Autopilot managing 3 compute categories in a region, with the option to disable Autopilot for the category.
Today Vantage launches Autopilot Controls: the ability for customers to view and adjust settings for Autopilot to fine-tune reserved instance purchases. Customers now have the ability to see graphs for usage trends and committed coverage for each compute category. Along with seeing their trends customers can also enable or disable Autopilot on a per compute category basis.
Before, customers opting into Autopilot could see a total representation of how much Vantage could save them on a monthly basis. However, they were unable to see what actions Autopilot may take for certain compute categories. Additionally, if customers knew they had instance type changes coming - for example when starting a new project or transitioning to the latest generation of instances - they may want to inform Autopilot not to take an action for a certain compute category but could only do this by contacting Vantage support. For more information about how Autopilot works, please refer to the Autopilot documentation.
Now, customers can see graphs for each compute category both before and after opting into Autopilot. Prior to opting in to Autopilot, customers will see a graphical breakdown of usage by on-demand, reserved instances, savings plan coverage and credits showing opportunities for savings. An initial coverage target will be shown to customers for each compute category showing where Autopilot plans to commit them to. Customers have the ability to optionally adjust autopilot automation for each compute category prior to and after enabling Autopilot.
Autopilot Controls are available to all customers, including users who have already opted into Autopilot, and is provided free of charge. Customers can view their Autopilot controls on the Autopilot settings page here.
Frequently Asked Questions
1. What is being launched today?
Vantage is launching Autopilot Controls: the ability for customers to fine-tune settings on Autopilot and view additional data to entertain what decisions Autopilot makes on their behalf. Customers can view normalized usage data on a per compute category basis and optionally disable categories entirely.
2. Who is the customer?
The customer is anyone wishing to or already opted into Autopilot.
3. How much does this cost?
There is no additional cost to Autopilot Controls. They are provided for free alongside Autopilot. Autopilot’s fee is 5% of savings realized, the cheapest of any cloud cost provider. All pricing information can be found on the Vantage pricing page here: https://www.vantage.sh/pricing
4. What is a “compute category” as mentioned above?
A compute category is a Vantage primitive that is a representation of your normalized EC2 workloads that consists of the following:
- An instance type family*.
- A region.
- A platform (Windows, Linux, RHEL, Windows SQL Server, etc..)
Each compute category has usage tracked hourly grouped by the following compute types:
- Existing customer usage covered by existing Reserved Instances
- Existing customer usage covered by existing Savings Plans
- Existing customer usage covered by credits
- On-demand usage
*Note: Windows, SUSE and RedHat Reserved Instances are targeted at a specific instance type, e.g. m5.2xlarge, instead of the entire family.
5. What information can I see before opting into Autopilot?
Autopilot will show you an aggregate level representation of your estimated monthly savings just as before. In addition, you will now see a set of graphs ordered by total potential savings for each compute category with a representation of the four types of usage for each
Each compute category will have a target commitment level shown with the ability for the customer to disable this category completely. These categories can be saved prior to enabling Autopilot and adjusted after enabling Autopilot as well.
6. How do I have Autopilot ignore a compute category?
There is an “Managed by Autopilot” toggle on each compute category that can be toggled on or off. If a compute category is ignored, it will simply be set to 0% coverage behind the scenes. If a compute category is toggled back to being tracked by Autopilot a target coverage rate will be shown.
7. If I have disabled a compute category, can I undo this?
Yes.
8. How often can I change settings on Autopilot controls?
As often as you’d like. That being said, we generally recommend to do one round of adjusting settings prior to enabling Autopilot and then adjusting things as you see fit.
9. After I make a change to Autopilot controls, how quickly will changes happen?
Between 24 and 48 hours. Autopilot purposefully will impose a minimum 24 hour delay before making any changes from Autopilot controls. Please note that because of a 30 day minimum holding period made by AWS with reserved instances, there may be certain cases where even adjusting controls could take some time to be applied.
11. How much historical trend usage will be shown on Autopilot control graphs?
A maximum of 60 days can be seen.
12. What happens if I disable a compute category after Autopilot has already made purchases for it?
Autopilot will immediately begin listening the reserved instances for sale.
