Automated rate optimization and applied observability for AWS

ProsperOps can be used by either team. ProsperOps lives at the intersection of the DevOps and FinOps functions, where the fragmented management of RIs and SPs can create misalignment. ProsperOps aligns those functions by automatically keeping your commitment discount portfolio synchronized to your AWS compute estate. Engineering can now manipulate the compute environment at DevOps speed and Finance can focus on higher-value tasks beyond commit discount administration.

ProsperOps only needs least privilege access to actively manage your commitment discount portfolio and passively monitor your cost data and AWS compute estate. No agent is required, only an AWS IAM role. That role prevents our ability to manipulate (launch, start, stop, terminate) your engineering resources and we have no ability to access your EC2 instances, Fargate containers, or Lambda functions. As such, ProsperOps has no ability to impact application performance, availability, etc.

We're firm believers in the security principle of least privilege, so our permission set includes the minimum amount of access we need to run our analysis and nothing more.

Limited IAM Permissions for Savings Analysis

Limited IAM Permissions for Active Discount Management

As a general practice, we only access and store information required for us to deliver our discount management service, which includes metadata about the types of compute resources you are running and the RIs and Savings Plans present in your account.

The permissions you grant us to your AWS account(s) do not give us the ability to make changes to your applications or to view your customer data. We're granted the minimum permissions required to optimize your commitment portfolio and you have an opportunity to review the full IAM policy prior to implementing it.

To accurately quantify and review your historical usage, discounts, coverage, and what ProsperOps can save in your environment, we recommend moving forward with a free Compute Savings Analysis. The permission can be found at: https://help.prosperops.com/limited-iam-permissions-for-savings-analysis.

Once complete, you'll be prompted to schedule a call to review your data. When you’re ready to subscribe, the active management permissions are upgraded through the ProsperOps console and can be found at https://help.prosperops.com/limited-iam-permissions-for-active-discount-management.

Our customers control 5 primary settings and our algorithms work inside of those constraints to maximize savings and minimize risk. The variables are:

• Base Spend Coverage Target - The dollar amount of commitment you are ultimately comfortable making with full-term Compute Savings Plans. Generally, customers select a dollar amount of commitment that is between 40% - 70% of their overall compute usage, depending on what future risk they are trying to manage (i.e., volatility, increasing usage from growth, decreasing usage from optimization, churn from AWS, etc.). We would eventually converge your existing commitment to the dollar amount you specify with Compute Savings Plans. Any usage above that Base Commitment amount would be addressed with a very flexible layer of Convertible RIs that can track usage changes dynamically (which a fixed Savings Plan commitment cannot).
• Base Allocation - The target distribution of the Base Commitment Amount across 1 and/or 3 year Compute Savings Plans.
• Base Prepayment Preference - The use of No Upfront, Partial Upfront, and/or All Upfront pre-payment models for new Compute Savings Plans our service deploys. In places where you use All or Partial Upfront, we would manage a quarterly prepay budget that you control. Our algorithm honors the prepay budget limit.
• Compute Shrink Allowance Target - The percentage of usage decline that you want our Flex commitment layer of Convertible RIs to be able to absorb at any time and still remain 100% utilized. The Compute Shrink Allowance ends up being related to the Base commitment (our recommended default is 50% Base commitment on usage and 30% Compute Shrink Allowance on usage).
• Flex Prepayment Preference - The use of No Upfront, Partial Upfront, or All Upfront pre-payment models for new Convertible RIs deployed by our service.

There are a handful of additional advanced settings that we review with customers as applicable. In summary, our system is very simple to configure and requires no ongoing administration (apart from periodic adjustments).

There are multiple ways ProsperOps derisks commitment within the limits of the AWS Service Terms. For context, our service has been operating for several years and we manage discount instruments on almost a billion dollars of annual AWS compute usage. In that time and at that scale, we have never had a single instance of our algorithms “overbuying” commitment.

Historically, AWS has honored cancellation requests on commits purchased in error as long as the cancellation request is made promptly.

By design, our service is autonomous and it’s not uncommon for us to take 1,000s of optimization actions a month for a reasonably sized, dynamic environment (sometimes at 5am on a Saturday). At that scale, inline reviews, approvals, vetoes, etc. aren’t feasible and it’s extremely difficult for humans to evaluate individual transactions without the full context of what our algorithms are seeking to holistically accomplish (i.e., an individual transaction may look nonsensical).

Obviously, customers need to be able to control and direct the activities of our service, so instead of inline, per transaction approvals, we frontload how you govern our service via settings. The settings allow you to define how much base commitment you want, how aggressive/conservative our flex coverage is vis a vis how much of a decline in compute usage you want to be able to absorb, etc.

Our service’s job is then to monitor your environment in real-time and handle the hour to hour activities of maximizing your savings and minimizing your commitment risk, within those setting constraints. You control settings and can change them at any time.

Yes. ProsperOps manages both inherited Standard Reserved Instances and Flex Boost Reserved Instances. To become eligible for ProsperOps to manage Standard Reserved Instances, you must register as a seller on the RI marketplace (a one-time step), you’ll need to log into the AWS Console as root on accounts where Standard RIs reside and follow this link to the RI Marketplace Seller Registration Page.

Please note, even though AWS requires you to configure a bank account, provide tax information, etc., practically speaking, for the Flex Boost service there will be no payment transfer or tax implications because all Flex Boost Standard RIs are No Upfront. We list all No Upfront RIs for $0 (few people will pay an upfront fee for a No Upfront RI) and are just looking for someone to assume the commitment from you. The benefit to them is a short-term commit that delivers the full No Upfront Standard RI discount. We generally have good success selling unutilized Standards (we have a few tricks that help them sell) and recommend registering.

Yes, we support discounting EC2 Dedicated Hosts and our platform is fully EC2 Dedicated Host aware. While AWS does offer a separate EC2 Dedicated Host reservation type, our platform strategy is to cover usage with Compute Savings Plans since they are a more flexible commitment type.

For the ProsperOps service to function properly and maximize your savings, RI and Savings Plans discount sharing must be enabled for all accounts in your AWS Organization.

To ensure RI and Savings Plans discount sharing is not disabled for any accounts, perform the following steps:

1. Log in to the AWS Console on your Management Account.
2. Navigate to the Billing service and select Billing Preferences.
3. Expand RI and Savings Plans discount sharing by selecting the dropdown.
4. Ensure all AWS accounts are in the left "discount sharing enabled" box (green) and no AWS accounts are in the right "discount sharing disabled" box (red). Also, make sure the bottom checkbox is not checked so all new AWS accounts added to the Organization will have discount sharing enabled by default.
   
5. Click the Save preferences button.

If you are migrating between AWS Organizations (e.g. consolidating Organizations, migrating to AWS Control Tower, etc.), ProsperOps can help you transition discount instruments into your new Organization whether you are an existing or prospective customer.

Discounts almost always move with the account in which they reside. If there are existing discount instruments inside of your current management account (AKA payer), they will need to be moved last after all of the member accounts have been moved out. The commitments will be moved under the new management account as a member account. A quick cutover is the best way to do this, with a majority of your spend moving at the same time as the commitments move over. ProsperOps will walk you through the process so you’re clear on what actions to take.

Here are a few best practices we’ve identified working with customers that have gone through this transition:

• Coordination is key - Move usage at the same time as commitments. A quick move is generally the easiest path versus a drawn out transition which takes more coordination.
• Common External IDs for IAM - Typically, ProsperOps uses unique identifiers for customers. If you’re moving to a new management account, ProsperOps would setup the account to have the same external ID for each org (both old and new). This enables our platform to immediately execute without needing to re-issue the IAM roles on the new organization when it becomes active.
• Historical Billing Data - Your historical billing data is erased when you move from one org to a new one, so if you are a prospective customer, ProsperOps would suggest preparing a Compute Savings Analysis ahead of the move to better understand the historical usage patterns and savings opportunity.
• Timeline - The specific steps to execute will depend on your transition timeline. ProsperOps will work with you to coordinate activities, regardless of how you plan to move forward.