Get your Flexsave estimate for AWS
The Flexsave for AWS sign-up flow consists of three steps:
Get savings estimate.
Provide payment information.
Activate Flexsave.
You must complete step one to unlock steps two and three.
The rest of this document guides you through step one (Savings estimate). By the end of this page, you will have your first savings estimate for AWS.
Get estimate
Choose how to get your estimate:
- Upload a CSV
- Create a CloudFormation stack
DoiT uses the AWS Cost Explorer to get aggregated data about your cloud spending. This data does not contain the names of your machines, buckets or tags. We use this data to calculate your potential savings.
To get your Flexsave estimate, you'll need to download a cost data CSV file and upload it to DoiT so we can calculate your potential savings. That's all there is to it!
Specifically, from the Flexsave for AWS screen:
Enter your AWS Account ID.
Your Account ID will help you identify your estimate later.
TipYour Account ID is the 12-digit number you use when signing in to the AWS Management Console.
Open the AWS Cost Management console.
Double-check the following options are set:
- Recommendation level: Payer
- Savings plan term: 3 years
- Payment option: No upfront
- Based on the past: 30 days
Select Download CSV.
Return to the Flexsave for AWS screen and select the Upload button in the lower-left corner.
When prompted, choose your CSV file and initiate the upload.
When the upload is complete, and we have processed your file, we'll display an on-screen notification message to let you know whether the upload was successful or not.
After successfully uploading a CSV file, you can select View my estimate to proceed.
You can select the Remove button if you want to reset the upload. You can use this feature if you accidentally uploaded the wrong file and want to start over.
If your upload was unsuccessful, please address the problem we notified you about and try again. Alternatively, you can contact our support team for assistance.
DoiT uses the Cost Explorer API to fetch aggregated data about your spend with AWS. This data doesn't contain the names of your machines, buckets or tags. We use this data to calculate your potential savings.
To use the Cost Explorer API, we have prepared a template CloudFormation stack to create a Cross-Account role that grants DoiT International limited read-only permissions to query your AWS account (read more).
To create the CloudFormation stack, select the OPEN AWS CLOUDFORMATION CONSOLE button. The browser will open a window prompting you to log into your AWS console.
You must authenticate using your AWS Organization management account.
Even if you have a non-management account that is linked to a management account (e.g., for consolidated billing), this won't be suitable.
If you continue with a non-management account, we won't be able to detect the problem until you try to activate Flexsave. At that point, you will need to delete the CloudFormation stack used for getting an estimate and the CloudFormation stack you created to activate Flexsave. Once you have deleted both stacks, you will have to start the whole process again by using your management account to get a new estimate.
After logging in to your AWS console, AWS will prompt you to create the CloudFormation stack from our template configuration:
If you want a more detailed look, we fully document the YAML file along with a brief explanation of the stack definition and our required policies.
After reviewing the stack configuration, scroll to the bottom of the page and select the Capabilities checkbox indicating that you acknowledge that AWS CloudFormation might create IAM resources with custom names (in this instance, the doitintl_cmp
role).
Finally, select CREATE STACK.
The AWS console will take you to the stack overview screen:
At first, the status of your stack will be CREATE_IN_PROGRESS
. Eventually, the status will change to CREATE_COMPLETE
.
We will wait for the stack to be created before attempting to fetch your billing data.
You may have to wait up to 30 seconds while AWS CloudFormation creates the stack and we fetch your billing data. If this process fails, please wait another 30 seconds and try again. Alternatively, you can contact our support team for assistance.
View your savings estimate
When your estimate is ready, select the View my estimate button on the Flexsave for AWS screen to proceed to your savings estimate:
We base the estimate on the following factors:
- Your last month's cloud bill
- The most commonly used resources and regions among DoiT customers
- An assumed annual growth rate of 0–5%
When you're ready to continue, select Return to home. The Savings estimate section is updated with the result.
We also added your AWS Organization ID to a drop-down menu at the top of the screen. Next to the Organization drop-down, you can select Start a new estimate to get an estimate for additional AWS organizations.
Start a new estimate
Flexsave supports multiple AWS organizations.
During sign-up
After getting your first estimate during sign-up, select Start a new estimate on the Flexsave for AWS screen to get a savings estimate for a new AWS organization.
Every time you get an estimate, the corresponding AWS Organization will be attached to your account. You can switch between AWS Organizations using the Organization drop-down on the Flexsave for AWS screen.
The process for getting an estimate is the same every time you attach an AWS Organization.
You can attach as many AWS Organizations as you want, and you are free to activate Flexsave on any of them, all of them, or none of them.
After sign-up
At the bottom of your Flexsave AWS dashboard is a table of all your attached AWS Organizations with some basic information, including the estimated monthly savings for any organizations not using Flexsave.
Above the table of your attached AWS Organizations, you can select Get another estimate for a new AWS Organization.