Analyzing the idle VMs in your multi-cloud infrastructure

Use the Terminate idle VMs recommendation to determine the idle or unused VMs in your multi-cloud infrastructure. The recommendations suggest actions to terminate these VMs to achieve cost savings. 

A VM is detected to be idle if CPU utilization is less than the threshold of 10%, network rate is less than the threshold of 5 Mbytes/s, and the disk rate is less than the threshold of 5 Mbytes/s for at least 95% of the powered on time within a period of 90 days.

By default, the recommendations are displayed on the Dashboard with a summary of the total idle VMs in your infrastructure and the estimated saving you can achieve by terminating them. For detailed recommendations per idle VM, click the <Number> Idle VMs. The Recommendations page opens and the VMs list is displayed in the Terminate idle VMs tab.  

The page provides a quick overview of the number of VMs that are idle and the estimated savings that you can achieve per month by terminating them. The page also displays details and recommendations per VM or server. 

From this page, you can achieve the following goals:

• Determine the number of idle VMs in your multi-cloud infrastructure.
• Determine the total estimated savings that you can achieve by terminating the idle VMs.
• Determine the number of days since the VM is been idle
• Review the status of the VMs based on the action requested.

To analyze the idle VMs in your multi-cloud infrastructure

1. In the navigation bar of BMC Helix Cloud Cost, select Recommendations. 
   The table on the page lists all the idle VMs and their details, such as estimated savings that you can achieve by terminating that VM, number of days the VM was detected to be idle, account name, and region information. 
   

1. Click the VM name. 
   The Resource Details page opens. 
2. This page shows detailed information about the VM, such as the days since the VM is idle, estimated savings that you can achieve by terminating this VMs, per month cost of the VM, and other details. 
   Every recommendation has an Efficiency icon associated with it. The icon indicates the level of efficiency improvement. It is based on the estimated savings (in $) per month that you can achieve by implementing the recommended actions. One of the following icons is displayed:
   •  - Cost saving is greater than $50
   •  - Cost saving is less than $50 but greater than $25
   •  - Cost saving is less than $25
3. Your cloud planner can use these recommendation details and depending on the cloud provider, terminate the idle VM to reclaim the storage space and achieve the estimated cost savings. 
4. The cloud planner can decide to ignore the recommendation or implement the recommendation. 
   Based on the action performed on the VMs, they are displayed under the Recommended, Ignored, or Action Taken tabs.

You can save an offline copy of the page in a CSV file for reference. To do so, click Export All to CSV. When you export to the CSV file, the recommendation details for all the virtual machines on the page are also exported. You can use this file as quick reference and perform the suggested actions.