Improve resource usage with Business hours
Summarize
Summarized using AI
This content was generated using new OpenAI-powered functionality. Results are provided on an as is basis and are not guaranteed to be accurate or complete.
Summary of Improve resource usage with Business hours
This feature helps ServiceNow customers optimize cloud resource usage and reduce costs by enforcing usage only during specified business hours. The Business hours recommendation page allows users to manage and configure business hours processes and policies that control when resources are powered on or off according to scheduled operational windows.
Show less
Key Features
- Business hours recommendation page: Centralized interface to manage business hours processes, view potential savings, and track resource status across various service categories and change groups.
- Savings insights: Displays predicted savings by service category (e.g., Compute, Database) and change group (e.g., Change Management, Application Development) if all recommendations are applied.
- Resource categorization tabs: Resources are organized into tabs based on their status such as New (candidates), Scheduled (enforced), Declined (rejected enforcement), Failed (enforcement failed), Report-only (policy match without enforcement), and Excluded (not considered for enforcement).
- Exclusion of unused resources: Resources powered off by the Unused resources job are automatically excluded from future enforcement to prevent unnecessary restarts.
- Detailed resource information: Columns provide key data including unique identifiers, predicted monthly savings, provider, service category, policy details, change requests, ownership, region, and failure reasons.
- Business hours operations configuration: Users can enable or disable the feature, set thresholds for non-business hour spend notifications, and control notifications to users or groups.
- Scheduling and policy management: Allows creation and application of business hours schedules and policies to power resources on/off based on defined schedules, which helps enforce resource usage discipline.
Key Outcomes
- Improved resource utilization by ensuring cloud resources run only during necessary business hours.
- Reduction in cloud spend through scheduled power-off of resources during off-hours.
- Visibility into potential and actual savings categorized by service type and organizational change groups.
- Automated enforcement with manual override options (decline or exclude resources) to accommodate business needs.
- Operational control through notifications about resource usage outside business hours to prevent unnecessary costs.
By leveraging Business hours, ServiceNow customers can actively manage and reduce cloud costs while maintaining operational efficiency through controlled resource scheduling.
Improve resource usage and reduce your cloud spend by running resources during the specified business hours.
Use the Business hours recommendation page to:
- Manage Business hours processes.
- Configure Business hours operations by selecting Settings.
- Define or update Business hours processes
| Chart | Description |
|---|---|
| Total potential savings by service category | Total savings to expect if all Business hours recommendations are applied by service category such as Compute and Database. |
| Total potential savings by change group | Total savings to expect if all Business hours recommendations are applied by change group such as Change Management and Application Development. |
| Business hr vs. Non-business hr spend | Spend for resources during business hours against non-business hours. |
| Tab | Description | Available action on selected recommendations |
|---|---|---|
| New | Resources that are candidates for applying Business hours processes. | Exclude |
| Scheduled | Resources that are tagged to have business hours enforced. | None |
| Declined | Resources for which owners (or other approver) didn’t want to enforce business hours (rejected the change request). | Exclude |
| Failed | Resources for which the attempt to enforce business hours failed. | Exclude |
| Report-only | Resources that match Report-only policies. | Exclude |
| Excluded | Resources that are configured not to be considered for business hours. Important: After an Unused resources job powers off a machine, the machine is added to the Excluded Resources list for Business Hours. This process ensures that the resource isn't started again in the future because it
matches a Business hours policy. The exclusion reason on the Business hours Excluded tab indicates that the resource is an unused resource. |
Remove from exclusion |
| Column | Description |
|---|---|
| Configuration item | Unique identifier of the resource. |
| Predicted monthly savings | Predicted savings if the Business hours recommendations are applied. |
| Provider | The provider that hosts the resource. |
| Service category | Lists all service categories from the instance sorted by name. |
| Cloud service | Lists all cloud categories sorted by name. |
| Policy | The Business hours policy that the resource matches to. |
| Policy type | Type of the Business hours policy that the resource matches to. |
| Change request | Change request that is associated with the recommendation. |
| Change Group | Change group for the resource. |
| Account | The service account that includes the resource. A service account represents a group of related regions in your provider account. |
| Region | If appropriate for the provider, region in the service account that hosts the resource. |
| Owned by | Owner of the resource. |
| Failure type | This column appears only for the Failed tab. Reason for which the change request wasn’t generated or the specified business hours weren’t applied to the resource. |
| Details | This column appears only for the Failed tab. Details of the failure type and the action that you must take to resolve the failure. |