Advanced Recommendations for Reservations

• Cost Analyzer provides personalized recommendations through Advanced recommendation, enabling users to customize settings that control reservation suggestions for compatible Azure services.

• It presents in-depth information about purchased reservations and delivers recommendations to enhance cost efficiency and performance.

• The subscriptions associated with the cost group are used to retrieve data on Azure resources, including their current SKU values.

The Summary card presents an overview of current costs and reservation savings, with the purchased reservation details accessible through the View option.

This list of purchased reservations includes all resource types, regardless of their compatibility with advanced recommendations.

Setup access for Turbo360 to see Reservations

Reservation Reader access must be provided to the Service Principal to view reservations and reservation-based recommendations.

Follow the below steps to provide Reservation Reader access to the Service Principal:

1. Navigate to the Reservations section in Azure Portal by searching Reservations in the search bar

2. Select the Role assignment option

3. Select Add role assignment -> Reservation Reader from the available Job function roles

4. Click Next and Select the required service principal by clicking the Select members option

5. Click Select and complete the process by selecting the Review + assign option

Types of Recommendations

Recommendations are currently only available for the following resource types and are provided based on their SKU:

• App service plan

• SQL Database

• SQL Managed instance

• Virtual Machine

Cost Analyzer provides four different types of recommendations for the supported resources:

1. Consider Reservation

Recommendations of this type show that you can optimize your cost utilization by purchasing a reservation with a one-year (or) three-year pricing commitment.

2. Change SKU and Consider Reservation

Recommendations of this type indicate that the resource's SKU should be changed to a SKU compatible with reservations and reservation can be purchased.

3. Change SKU and Use Existing Reservation

Recommendations of this type indicates that the resource's SKU should be changed to one that is compatible with reservations and can leverage the unused reservations.

4. Already with Reservation

Recommendations of this type indicates that the resources are already using the purchased reservations.

5. Partially Reserved

Recommendation of this type indicates that the SQL database resources have a purchased reservation and their current Vcore count is more than what they purchased.

Refresh recommendation data

• Reservation recommendations are updated every 48 hours from the time the cost group is created.

• A manual refresh can be performed within the Advanced rightsizing recommendations at the root cost group to view the recommendations immediately.

Recommendation settings

The Recommendation settings button allows users to adjust the evaluation duration and the currency type to receive customized recommendations.

Visualizing resource usage

The usage patterns of resources listed in Advanced reservation recommendations can be accessible by clicking it, with time range customizable through the Time settings option to focus on a specific interval.

This widget will also provide information on recommendations, including both the current and recommended SKUs.

Resource usage by status

The resource usage option accessible when clicking an advanced reservation recommendation provides a calendar view that depicts the status of users' Azure resources over time. Multiple toggle modes are available for better accessibility.

The resource status considered here are:

• Active

• Idle

These status are determined based on specific metric values for the respective resource types:

• App service plan - CPU Percentage

• SQL Database - CPU Percentage

• SQL Managed instance - CPU Percentage

• Virtual Machine - CPU Percentage

The Agenda view displays a day's active and idle hours in a grid format.

Reservation expiry monitoring

Azure Reservations offer cost savings but come with a predefined term (e.g., 1-year or 3-year). Monitoring reservation expiry helps maintain cost efficiency and prevents unexpected charges when resources revert to pay-as-you-go pricing.

The Cost Analyzer includes Reservation expiry monitoring, allowing users to set notification preferences for a specified number of days before their reservation expires.

How to Monitor Reservation Expiry

1. Navigate to the Advanced Recommendation section under Reservations.

2. In the Purchased Reservation Details, select the Monitoring option.

4. Enable Reservation Expiry Monitoring.

5. Set the number of days in advance to receive reminders before the reservation expires.

6. Select the preferred notification channels for receiving monitoring alerts.

7. Click Save to activate reservation expiry monitoring.

7. Go to the Incidents tab:

   • View alerts sent as reminders before reservation expiry.

   • Click on an alert to see detailed reservation information, including the purchase date and expiry date.

Below is an example of a report received via Turbo360 mail, detailing the reservation information, including the purchase date and expiry date.

Ignore recommendations

Recommendations can be disregarded if you prefer to use the resource with its existing SKU. This can be done by selecting the recommendations and clicking Actions -> Ignore to ignore them.

The ignore action offers two options: completely ignoring the resource from recommendations or ignoring it until a specified date range.

The ignored ones are accessible in Actions -> View ignored recommendations.

Recommendation notification

A reservation recommendation can be notified as a recommendation report, allowing a specific team (or) team member to prioritize actions for a particular resource.

1. Select a reservation recommendation

2. Click Actions -> Trigger notification

3. Choose the desired channels (or) configure recipient mail address

4. Click Send
   

The recommendation data will be sent as a report to the configured channels.

A bell icon will appear next to any recommendation for which a notification has been triggered. Clicking the icon will reveal the notification details.

The View Logs button, accessible when viewing a recommendation with an active notification, will also display the details of that notification.

Below is an image of recommendation report received via Teams channel after triggering it for a reservation recommendation:

Export Reservation recommendations

Reservation recommendations can be downloaded as an excel.

1. Go to Action dropdown in Reservation section

2. Click the Download as excel option

Downloaded excel file contains the basic details of the resources and its recommendation