This guide aims at providing you with a clear and practical understanding of Savings Plans to help you optimize your infrastructure costs. We'll explain what Savings Plans are, how they work, and how to choose the model best suited to your specific needs. Through concrete examples, you will discover how these plans can reduce your expenditure while offering flexibility in the management of your resources.
This guide will also detail the use of the Savings Plans dashboard, which will allow you to track your costs, the number of resources used and covered by your plans, and the savings generated. Finally, we'll help you understand the billing aspects so you can analyze and maximize the benefits of your Savings Plan choices.
To see how to modify your existing Savings Plan, see this guide.
How do Savings Plans work?
What is a Savings Plan?
Savings Plans are a flexible pricing model that offers lower rates than pay-as-you-go pricing, in exchange for a commitment to use the service for a given period (1, 6, 12, 24, or 36 months).
How does a Savings Plan work in general?
When a customer subscribes to a Savings Plan, they agree to pay a fixed amount for a given period. In return, this plan covers a specific number of simultaneous resources for which they will pay no other charges, enabling them to benefit from advantageous billing.
Here are a few scenarios to help you understand how this works:
- Case "1:1": Let's imagine that a customer has 10 OVHcloud B3-8 instances and subscribes to a Savings Plan that covers precisely 10 B3-8 instances for a period of 1 year. In this case, the customer will only pay the amount of their Savings Plan, and this amount will fully cover the costs associated with their 10 B3-8 instances for the duration of the commitment. There are no additional charges at the end of each month, as the instances are covered by the plan.
- Case "1.5:1": Now let's suppose that another customer uses 15 B3-8 instances, but subscribes to a Savings Plan covering only 10 B3-8 instances. In this case, the customer benefits from the advantageous Savings Plan discount for the first 10 instances. However, the other 5 instances, which are not covered by the Savings Plan, will be billed at the standard hourly rate.
- Case "0.8 :1": Lastly, a customer has subscribed to a Savings Plan for 10 B3-8 type instances, but only uses 8 instances simultaneously during the month. Even if this customer does not use all the instances covered by their plan, they will not pay any additional charges. The Savings Plan will always cover the 8 simultaneous instances used, and the customer will benefit from the advantageous pricing of the 10 instances at no extra cost. This situation remains financially advantageous, even if the customer does not use all 10 instances of the Savings Plan.
NOTE: Update on the term simultaneous resources:
A Savings Plan covers several resources that are simultaneously active. For example, for a Savings Plan of 1 resource, if a customer starts a resource at 10:05 AM and deletes it at 10:10 AM, then creates another resource at 10:17 AM and deletes it at 10:30 AM, even though they have started and deleted two resources, only the resources that were switched on at the same time are counted. In this case, only one resource is active at the same time, so the Savings Plan covers both resources without additional billing. This also applies if the resources are used at different times during the month (for example, from the 1st to the 10th and then from the 15th to the 30th), as long as they are not active at the same time.
How do Savings Plans work for instances?
Savings Plans for instances are based on the commitment of a quantity of instances for a given duration, offering advantageous invoicing for these.
NOTE: With regards to simultaneously active instances, find out whether a suspended or paused resource is considered active with the following guide: Shelve or pause an instance.
Please note that only 3rd-generation instances (B3, C3, R3) are eligible for Savings Plans. Make sure that your instance belongs to this generation to benefit from this offer.
Eligible/compatible services
This table summarizes the eligibility of OVHcloud services:
| Service | Eligible |
|---|---|
| Compute instances | Yes |
| Managed Kubernetes worker nodes | Yes |
| Network | No |
| Storage | No |
| Public Cloud Databases | No |
| AI | No |
NOTE: Savings Plans are not available for Local Zones instances.
Automated infrastructure management with Savings Plans
Customers do not have to manually associate their instances with Savings Plans. We manage this automatically, taking into account all existing and future instances when calculating Savings Plan consumption.
For example:
- If a customer has 10 B3-8 instances and subscribes to a Savings Plan for 10 B3-8 instances, these will automatically be covered by the Savings Plan billing.
- If the customer has 15 B3-8 instances and subscribes to a Savings Plan for 10 B3-8 instances, the first 10 will automatically be covered by the Savings Plan billing, and the other 5 will be billed by the hour without a discount.
Creating a tailor-made business model
To optimize costs while adapting to your varied needs, it is possible to combine several Savings Plans with different characteristics, such as size, type/model of resources, or length of commitment. This approach makes it possible to align coverage with specific uses while maximizing savings.
Real-life example:
- A customer uses two types of workloads:
- A stable production environment with 20 B3-16 VMs, used 24/7 all year round.
- A variable development environment, with an average of 10 B3-8 VMs, used mainly over 8 months of the year.
- After analyzing its needs, the customer opted for the following combination:
- A 3-year Savings Plan covering 20 B3-16 VMs. This represents a reduction of 54% compared with hourly billing.
- A 1-year Savings Plan covering 10 B3-8 VMs. This represents a reduction of 35% compared to hourly billing.
Thanks to this combination, the customer achieves substantial savings by optimizing production resources over the long term, while maintaining the flexibility required for its development environment, with reductions of 54% and 35% respectively, compared with hourly invoicing.
Use the dashboard to analyze your Savings Plans
The Savings Plans dashboard allows you to track and analyze your Savings Plans, providing essential information about their usage and coverage. You can view specific data by period and service.
Selection filters and plan indicators
- Period: Allows you to select a specific period to observe the use of Savings Plans and the associated coverage.
- Service: Allows you to filter the specific service the Savings Plans are associated with.
The indicators displayed in the Savings Plans dashboard are adjusted according to the filters applied. This makes it possible to customize the display of indicators to focus on specific periods, particular services, or selected instance types.
Only data from the last 6 months is available.
- Number of active Savings Plans: Total number of your Savings Plans active on the last day of the given period for the selected resource.
- % Savings Plan Utilization: Average use of your Savings Plans (over the selected period for the selected resource). For example, if you used 8 instances and your Savings Plans cover 10, the utilization rate would be 80%.
- % Savings Plan Coverage: Average coverage of your Savings Plans (over the selected period for the selected resource). For example, if you have consumed 10 instances and your Savings Plans cover 8, then your coverage rate is 80%.
If the selected period has already ended (one month before the current one), two additional fields will be available to allow you to view more detailed data:
- Savings achieved: Total savings (over the selected period for the selected resource).
- Excess amount: Invoice amount exceeding your Savings Plans configuration (over the selected period for the selected resource).
Graphics
NOTE: For a Savings Plan started during the month, days before its creation are displayed in red, indicating the absence of coverage.
-
Y-axis legend on graph:
- The Y axis will display the number of instances used.
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Graph color legends:
- Green: Represents the number of resources covered by a Savings Plan.
- Red: Represents the number of resources not covered by a Savings Plan and billed hourly.
Savings Plan Usage Detail
- Create a Savings Plan: A button to create a new Savings Plan.
Each period in the table corresponds to a change in resource usage, such as the addition or deletion of a resource or Savings Plan.
-
Savings Plan Usage Detail columns:
- Start: This column shows the start date and time of the resource consumption period.
- End: This column shows the date and time at which the resource consumption period ends.
- Usage: Represents the amount of resources consumed during the selected period.
- Total coverage: Indicates the total of resources covered by your Savings Plans during this period.
Thanks to this dashboard, you can monitor the use and efficiency of your Savings Plans in real time, adjust your strategy according to the data observed, and optimize your costs for more efficient management of your OVHcloud resources.
Understanding billing
Please note that it is not yet possible to modify a Savings Plan. Please contact the support teams.
To better understand your billing once you subscribe to a Savings Plan, here is an explanation of the different lines you can find.
Billing for Savings Plan instances
- Billing for your Savings Plans
When you subscribe to a Savings Plan, you will get billed monthly; the amount of your discount depends on the commitment period chosen when the Savings Plan was created. However, the instances covered by this plan are not itemized individually on your bill. On your invoice, you will only see the total amount corresponding to the Savings Plan, and not the specific instances it covers. This simplifies invoicing by showing only one line that groups all the instances covered by your commitment, without the need to detail each instance.
NOTE: You cannot mix instance flavors within a Savings Plan, but you can stack multiple plans.
A pro rata will be applied if your Savings Plan starts during the month.
- Billing for your additional instances
Additional instances, i.e., those not covered by your Savings Plan, are billed on an hourly basis, as with standard billing. For example, if you use 10 3rd-generation instances for 10 hours during the month, you will be billed on a per-hour basis. This gives an invoice for 100 hours (10 instances x 10 hours), billed at the standard hourly rate, in addition to the Savings Plan line.
FAQ
When is the Savings Plan active or operational?
Once the Savings Plan has been validated in the OVHcloud Control Panel, it becomes operational the next day at 12:01 UTC.
What is the minimum resource quantity required for a Savings Plan?
The minimum amount of resources needed in a Savings Plan depends on the specific resource.
For B3/C3/R3 instances, the minimum quantity is 1 instance for a minimum period of 1 month.
Can I have several Savings Plans?
Yes, you can set up several Savings Plans for the same Public Cloud project.
Can I combine two or more instance flavors (i.e., B3-8 and B3-16) into a Savings Plan?
No, but you can create and stack Savings Plans for each instance flavor, i.e., one plan for B3-8 instance, another for B3-16, and so on.
Only the name of your Savings Plan can be changed. Currently, you cannot change the duration, volume, or service in a Savings Plan once it has been set up.
No, you cannot stop or cancel a Savings Plan. You still have to pay the full amount, even if you delete the linked resources.
Not by default, but you can enable that feature in the OVHcloud Control Panel. See this guide for more details.
At the end of your Savings Plan subscription, the discount will no longer apply. The resources previously covered by this Savings Plan will be billed at the advertised standard price. When one Savings Plan ends, it does not impact any other Savings Plans you might have in the same Public Cloud project.
Go further
For more information and tutorials, please see our other Public Cloud support guides or explore the guides for other OVHcloud products and services.