Home New York IT Operations Management IT Operations Management ITOM Optimization ITOM Optimization: Cloud Insights application Cloud Insights admin guide Business Hours: Ensuring resources run only when required

Business Hours: Ensuring resources run only when required

A Business Hours job applies policies to identify resources that are running when they should be powered off, reports them, and can start and stop them on a schedule that you specify. Running only during specified business hours can significantly reduce your cloud spend.

How the Business Hours feature works

Each successful execution of a Billing Download job triggers the Business Hours, Rightsizing, and Unused Machines jobs to analyze spend and usage data and to update the actionable recommendations in reports. Business Hours jobs follow this process:

For each Business Hours policy, examine the CMDB to identify resources that match the policy criteria. (Policies are described in the following sections.)
For each resource that matches a policy, update Business Hours reports that show spend for Business Hours and Non-Business Hours usage for the last 30 days.
For Manual Approval or Auto-approval policy types, generate change requests to enforce the on/off schedule that is defined in the policy. Either of the following, depending policy settings:
- Generate a change request for each resource that matches a policy.
- Generate a single change request that applies to all CIs that match the policy.
When a change request is approved, schedule the on/off actions for the associated resources as specified in the policy.
Repeat this process whenever billing data is updated.

Important: AWS only:

AWS Auto Scaling group (ASG) operations act to maintain minimum capacity for ASG-member resources. To avoid conflicts with ASG operations, the Cloud Insights app excludes all instances that are part of an Auto Scaling group from Business Hours operations.

You can view ASG-member resources on the Excluded Resources tab for Business Hours.

Example: Business Hours policy

The Finance department policy example has the following settings:

The policy is active — it is applied every time billing and usage data is updated.
The approval type is Manual approval (Normal Change), which means that, after a qualified user approves the change request, the schedule for resources that match the policy is adjusted.
The Business Hours (on/off) schedule is ON from 8:00 AM to 5:00 PM.
The power-on and power-off flows are specified.
Only resources that meet the following resource criteria match the policy:
- The cloud provider is AWS and the service account is Billing 15970.
- The resource has a tag with the name Department with the value Finance.

After the policy is applied, for each resource that matches the policy and where the change request was approved, the system starts the resource at 8:00AM and stops it at 5:00PM. The actual start and stop times vary slightly due to changes in system demand and the time it takes for the resource to start and stop.

Business Hours approval types

For each resource that matches the policy criteria, the actions that the policy takes depend on the approval type:

Auto-approval (Standard Change) approval type

Generate a recommendation to apply the specified business hours and add the resource to Business Hours reports.
Generate and then auto-approve a change request for the assignment group.
Add the resource to Business Hours reports.
Apply the Business Hours schedule to the resource.

Manual approval (Normal Change) approval type

Generate a recommendation to apply the specified business hours schedule and add the resource to Business Hours reports.
Generate a change request for members of the assignment group.
Add the resource to Business Hours reports.
Any member of the group with the sn_change_write role can approve the change request.
When approved, apply the Business Hours schedule to the resource.

Report-only approval type

Generate a recommendation to apply the specified business hours.
Add the resource to Business Hours reports.

Previous topic

Next topic

Release version

Business Hours: Ensuring resources run only when required

How the Business Hours feature works

For each Business Hours policy, examine the CMDB to identify resources that match the policy criteria. (Policies are described in the following sections.)
For each resource that matches a policy, update Business Hours reports that show spend for Business Hours and Non-Business Hours usage for the last 30 days.
For Manual Approval or Auto-approval policy types, generate change requests to enforce the on/off schedule that is defined in the policy. Either of the following, depending policy settings:
- Generate a change request for each resource that matches a policy.
- Generate a single change request that applies to all CIs that match the policy.
When a change request is approved, schedule the on/off actions for the associated resources as specified in the policy.
Repeat this process whenever billing data is updated.

Important: AWS only:

You can view ASG-member resources on the Excluded Resources tab for Business Hours.

Example: Business Hours policy

The Finance department policy example has the following settings:

The policy is active — it is applied every time billing and usage data is updated.
The approval type is Manual approval (Normal Change), which means that, after a qualified user approves the change request, the schedule for resources that match the policy is adjusted.
The Business Hours (on/off) schedule is ON from 8:00 AM to 5:00 PM.
The power-on and power-off flows are specified.
Only resources that meet the following resource criteria match the policy:
- The cloud provider is AWS and the service account is Billing 15970.
- The resource has a tag with the name Department with the value Finance.

Business Hours approval types

For each resource that matches the policy criteria, the actions that the policy takes depend on the approval type:

Auto-approval (Standard Change) approval type

Generate a recommendation to apply the specified business hours and add the resource to Business Hours reports.
Generate and then auto-approve a change request for the assignment group.
Add the resource to Business Hours reports.
Apply the Business Hours schedule to the resource.

Manual approval (Normal Change) approval type

Generate a recommendation to apply the specified business hours schedule and add the resource to Business Hours reports.
Generate a change request for members of the assignment group.
Add the resource to Business Hours reports.
Any member of the group with the sn_change_write role can approve the change request.
When approved, apply the Business Hours schedule to the resource.

Report-only approval type

Generate a recommendation to apply the specified business hours.
Add the resource to Business Hours reports.

How search works:

Topics are ranked in search results by how closely they match your search terms

Business Hours: Ensuring resources run only when required

Business Hours: Ensuring resources run only when required

How the Business Hours feature works

Example: Business Hours policy

Business Hours approval types

On this page

Business Hours: Ensuring resources run only when required

Business Hours: Ensuring resources run only when required

How the Business Hours feature works

Example: Business Hours policy

Business Hours approval types

Log in to personalize your search results and subscribe to topics