Create a Recommendation From a Policy Template

Flexera uses policies and their incident data to create recommendations which populate Cloud Cost Optimization’s Total Potential Savings chart to provide the Cloud Cost Optimization users insights on potential savings across their cloud estate and link them to Billing Centers for those owners to act.

The table in the following Policy Info Block subsection provides specific details to enable the policies to feed into the Total Potential Savings charts and data tables. There are two main changes:

• The metadata to define the policy as a recommendation, and,

• The incident standard fields that are read to populate the recommendations table.

Policy Info Block

Add the following fields to the info block as show in the example below.

Field	Example	Format	Required	Description
recommendation_type	Usage Reduction	string	yes	This populates the type field on the recommendation. Must be one of the known values: Rate Reduction or Usage Reduction .
provider	AWS	string	yes	This populates the vendor field on the recommendation.
policy_set	Unused Volumes	string	yes	This populates the Set field on the recommendation. Used to category like recommendations across cloud vendors

Example

name "AWS Unused Volumes"
rs_pt_ver 20180301
type "policy"
…
info(
  version: "3.6",
  service: "EBS",
  recommendation_type: “Usage Reduction”,
  policy_set: "Unused Volumes"
  provider: "AWS",
)
…

Standard Incident Fields

The fields are defined in the Policy Template policy declaration.

Field	Example	Format	Required	Description
savings	23.456	number	yes	Estimated monthly savings.
accountID (ID capitalized)	"902149042019"	string	yes	AWS Account Number, Azure Subscription ID, or Google Project ID. Use to assign the recommendation to the billing center.
accountName	"Team1 Staging"	string	no	The user-friendly name for the above accountID. Used to assign the recommendation to the billing center.
resourceGroup	"My Resource Group"	string	no	Azure Resource Group. Use to assign the recommendation to the billing enter.
tags	[ "env=dev", "tag2=value2" ]	array of strings (each entry must use the "=" delimiter between tag key and value)	yes	The tags (labels from Google) on the resource. Use to assign the recommendation to the billing center.
resourceID	"db-3ZP2QSD2IL"	string	yes	The unique ID of the cloud vendor resource.
resourceType	"gp2"	string	no	May be a volume type, instance type, and so on.
region	"us-east-1"	string	no	The cloud provider geo where the resource is provisioned.
service	"EC2"	string	no	The actual field populated on the incident, independent of a info:service object on the policy template.
term	"1 year"	string	no	Term of discount commitment.
platform	"Windows" "MySQL"	string	no	Operating system, database engine.
paymentOption	"All Upfront"	string	no	Purchasing option of a discount commitment.
scope	"Shared"	string	no	Scope of a discount commitment.
licenseModel	"BYOL" "License Included"	string	no	License model of a reservation or a resource.
deploymentOption	"Multi-AZ"	string	no	Deployment option of an RDS instance or RI.
averageUtilization	86	number	no	Predicted utilization for a recommended reservation.
lookbackPeriod	"30 days"	string	no	Time range analyzed the recommendation is based on.
resourceName	"testVM"	string	no	Resource name.
newResourceType	"r6.xlarge"	string	no	Recommended resource type if rightsizing is recommended.
size	4	number	no	Size of a resource. For example, volume size.
state	"unattached"	string	no	Resource state. For example, in-use for volume.
threshold	70	number	no	Tested threshold to produce recommendation.
thresholdType	"avg" "p95"	string	no	Utilization metric percentile tested against threshold.
cpuAverage	27	number	no	CPU utilization average value.
cpuMaximum	89	number	no	CPU utilization maximum value.
cpuP95	56	number	no	CPU utilization 95th percentile value.
memAverage	25	number	no	Memory utilization average value.
memMaximum	80	number	no	Memory utilization maximum value.
memP95	77	number	no	Memory utilization 95th percentile value.
iopsAverage	100000	number	no	Input/Output operations per second average value.
recommendationDetails	“Terminate EC2 instance <instance ID> in AWS account <account name> (<account number>)”	string	no	The user-friendly description of the recommended action.

Example

policy "policy_unattached_volumes_list" do 
… 
    export "unused_volumes" do 
      resource_level true 
      field "accountID" do 
        label "Account ID" 
      end 
      field "accountName" do 
        label "Account Name" 
      end 
      field "region" do 
        label "Region" 
      end 
      field "resourceID" do 
        label "Resource ID" 
        path "volumeId" 
      end 
      field "resourceType" do 
        label "Resource Type" 
      end 
      field "size" do 
        label "Size" 
      end 
      field "tags" do 
        label "Tags" 
      end 
      field "savings" do 
        label "Estimated Monthly Savings" 
      end 
      field "savingsCurrency" do 
        label "Savings Currency" 
      end 
      field "id" do 
        label "Id" 
        path "volumeId" 
      end 
      field "service" do 
        label "Service" 
      end 
      field "newResourceType" do
        label "Recommended Resource Type"
      end 
      field "platform" do
        label "Platform"
      end 
      field "cpuP95" do
        label "CPU Utilization (p95)"
        path "cpu_p95" 
    end 
  end 
end

See the full public version of AWS Unused Volumes in our GitHub repository.