Optimize

The Optimize feature continually analyzes your environment and automatically generates Recommendations that will help your organization save money and avoid costs. Optimize collects the information for Recommendations from a variety of sources, including billing and usage data, resource utilization, and configuration detail. Each Recommendation contains observations about unexpected costs, further insight into affected resources, and specific suggestions for optimization.

The Optimize feature also supports user-created Insights, which allow you to track cost trends or optimizations that you identify in your environment.

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To access Optimize, you must have a role that grants the appropriate permissions. Managing Recommendation Types requires Read and Write permissions for Optimize.

Optimize Overview

Select Optimize from the CloudZero navigation to display the Optimize Overview tab.

Summary of Costs, Potential Savings, and Recommendations

The Overview tab highlights your optimization opportunities, showing your total spend over the past 30 days, the total monthly potential savings, and the number of open Recommendations.

You can group the open Recommendations by different Dimensions, such as Account, Region, or Service, including Custom Dimensions your organization has defined, such as Team or Product.

The Recommendations you see depend on your role and data access filters. For example, if your role has access to a single account, only Recommendations associated with that account are shown.

Realized Savings

On the Overview tab, you can track the savings realized from addressed Recommendations. The total Realized Savings is a sum of all the savings for Recommendations marked as Addressed, either manually by a user or by automatic detection. CloudZero calculates realized savings for all addressed Recommendations on a daily basis.

To view Realized Savings for a given time range, scroll to the Realized Savings block, select the date picker, and enter a custom time range or select from the options. To break down savings by different Dimensions, choose the Dimension from the Group By selector.

The following explains how the value of Realized Savings is calculated.

Realized Savings Definitions

• X: The number of days since a Recommendation has been addressed.
• Y: The number of days since a Recommendation has been addressed, up to a maximum of 30.

Realized Savings Calculation

Realized savings are calculated by comparing the initial 30-day cost impact of a resource against its 30-day cost impact on day X. This difference is then divided by Y to determine the average daily cost impact.

Realized Savings Example

Consider a resource with an initial daily cost impact of $100 (or $3,000 over 30 days). If a change is made that reduces this cost impact to $0, the Realized Savings over time would be as follows:

Recommendations

CloudZero evaluates your cloud environment against a set of Recommendation Types, which are specific patterns or rules (for example, Fix Lambda Function with Excessive Error Rate). When a resource matches a Recommendation Type's criteria, CloudZero generates a Recommendation identifying the affected resource and the potential savings. Each matching resource produces its own Recommendation.

The CloudZero platform automatically creates Recommendations for AWS, Azure, and GCP from observations across all of your cloud spend. Recommendations will have the Source field set to CloudZero with a cost impact, title, and description specific to the potential savings identified.

To view details about your recommended actions, select the Recommendations tab or drill down from the Overview visualizations into a specific subset of Recommendations.

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You can also use the CloudZero AI Hub to analyze cost optimization opportunities using natural language. AI-driven skills can investigate cost spikes, identify top cost drivers, and surface optimization Recommendations automatically.

In the Recommendations tab, you can do the following:

• Search Recommendations.
• Filter Recommendations by one or more Dimensions.
• Group Recommendations by a single Dimension.
• Choose the columns shown in the Recommendation table.
• View details for a single Recommendation.
• Take action on one or more Recommendations.
• Manage Recommendation Types.

Search Recommendations

Click the search text field above the table and type your query. Search matches the Recommendation ID, title, and any other properties in the table across your entire environment.

Filter Recommendations

Use filters to narrow the Recommendations list. You can apply filters to most Dimensions and Recommendation properties, use operators such as is or is not, and combine multiple filters.

To apply a filter:

1. Click Add Filter above the table.
2. Navigate through the filter menu or use text search to find the filter you want.
3. Click the filter to apply it.

You can filter by the following properties:

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If you would like to filter by additional CloudZero Dimensions, reach out to your FinOps Account Manager.

Use Quick Filters

Default quick filters above the table let you quickly switch between Recommendation statuses:

• Open: Recommendations with a status of Not Started or In Progress.
• Addressed: Recommendations marked as Addressed, either manually or through automatic detection by CloudZero.
• Ignored: Recommendations with a status of Ignored.

Group Recommendations

Group Recommendations by any property using the Group By selector. Select None to remove all groupings. When a group is applied, sorting by a property affects all Recommendations within the group.

Beside each group, you will see the total potential savings for all Recommendations in the group.

Choose Recommendation Table Columns

Select Columns above the table to choose which properties to display. This controls column visibility, not which Recommendations are shown (use filters for that). Columns include all enabled CloudZero Dimensions.

Take Actions on Recommendations

Select one or more Recommendations to display the action bar above the table. Available actions:

• Change Status: Update the workflow status for the selected Recommendations.
• Change Effort Level: Set the effort level (Low, Medium, or High) for the selected Recommendations.
• Create Jira Work Item: Create a Jira ticket linked to the selected Recommendations. See Jira Integration for setup details.
• Post Comment: Add a comment to the selected Recommendations.

View Recommendation Details

Select a Recommendation to open a side panel with additional detail and context.

• Overview: Description of the Recommendation, how it was generated, and remediation steps. Includes a graph of real cost over the past 30 days for the associated resource(s). Select View in Explorer to interact with cost data in the Explorer.
• Resource Details: Configuration details and tags associated with the resource.
• Activity: History of all actions taken on the Recommendation, including status changes and comments. You can view, add, edit, and delete comments to facilitate discussions about how to act on the Recommendation.

Manage Recommendation Types

Control which Recommendation Types are evaluated for your organization through the Optimize Settings panel. When you disable a Recommendation Type, CloudZero stops evaluating it and hides existing Recommendations of that type. Changes take effect during the next daily analysis cycle.

To manage Optimize Settings, click Settings in the upper-right corner of the Optimize page. The list of Recommendation Types allows you to:

• View enabled and disabled Recommendation Types: See all available Recommendation Types and whether each is enabled or disabled for your organization.
• Enable or disable Recommendation Types: Click a checkbox to toggle Recommendation Types, then click Save.
• Search: Find Recommendation Types by name. The search is case-insensitive and supports partial matches (e.g., search rds to find all Amazon RDS Recommendation Types).

Optimize Settings only shows Recommendation Types for providers you have connected to CloudZero. If you do not have a Microsoft Azure connection, for example, you will not see Recommendation Types for Azure.

Insights

Insights are user-generated observations on cost trends or optimizations in your environment. You create Insights in the Explorer and they are displayed on the Insights tab.

To create an Insight:

1. Navigate to the Explorer and select Create Insight.
2. Enter a title, description, and category, and optionally a cost impact.

The Link to Details will automatically populate with a direct URL to the relevant place in the Explorer.