Business hours

  • Release version: Xanadu
  • Updated August 1, 2024
  • 3 minutes to read
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    Summary of Business hours

    The Business hours feature in ServiceNow Cloud Cost Management helps you reduce cloud spend by identifying resources running outside specified business hours and managing their power states accordingly. It applies policies to start and stop resources on schedules you define, focusing on resource efficiency and cost control.

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    This feature integrates with AWS and Google Cloud Platform (GCP) databases (AWS and GCP supported; Azure supports compute only, not databases) and works in conjunction with billing data updates to deliver actionable insights.

    How Business hours Works

    • Triggered by each successful Billing Download job, it runs analysis jobs including Business Hours, Budget Forecast, and Rightsizing.
    • Examines the Configuration Management Database (CMDB) to find resources matching defined Business hours policies.
    • Updates reports showing spend during business and non-business hours for the past 30 days.
    • Integrates with ServiceNow Change Management to generate change requests to start/stop resources based on policy schedules.
    • Supports both manual and auto-approval for change requests, with options to create change requests per resource or grouped by policy.
    • Excludes AWS Auto Scaling Group (ASG) instances to avoid conflicts, and supports Google Cloud Managed Instance Groups (MIGs) for scalable workloads.

    Business hours Policy Configuration

    A Business hours policy defines:

    • Activation status and how often it applies (e.g., after billing data updates).
    • Approval type: Manual approval (Normal Change), Auto-approval (Standard Change), or Report-only.
    • The on/off schedule for resources (e.g., 8:00 AM to 5:00 PM).
    • Resource criteria based on cloud provider, service account, and tags (for example, AWS resources tagged with Department: Finance).

    When policies are applied and change requests approved, resources start and stop according to the schedule, with slight variations due to system demand and processing times.

    Approval Types and Their Effects

    • Auto-approval (Standard Change): Automatically generates and approves change requests, applies schedules, and updates reports without manual intervention.
    • Manual approval (Normal Change): Generates change requests requiring approval by users with the snchangewrite role before applying schedules.
    • Report-only: Generates recommendations and reports without creating or applying change requests, useful for visibility and planning.

    Practical Benefits for ServiceNow Customers

    • Automate management of cloud resources to align usage with business hours, reducing unnecessary cloud costs.
    • Gain visibility into resource usage during business and non-business hours via detailed reports.
    • Leverage integrated Change Management workflows to enforce schedules and maintain governance.
    • Customize policies by cloud provider, tags, and business schedules to fit organizational needs.

    Additional Information

    • You can exclude resources from all Cloud Cost Management reports if needed.
    • The feature supports ongoing updates aligned with billing data refreshes to keep recommendations current.

    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.

    The insights_admin role can create policies for AWS and GCP databases.
    Note:
    Azure only supports compute, not database.

    How the Business hours feature works

    Each successful execution of a Billing Download job triggers the Budget Forecast, Business Hours, Reservation Plans, Rightsizing, and Unused resources jobs to analyze the spend and usage data and to update the actionable recommendations in the reports. Business Hours jobs follow this process.
    Figure 1. How the Business Hours feature works
    Process flow for Business Hours
    1. For each Business hours policy, examine the CMDB to identify resources that match the policy criteria.
    2. 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.
    3. Business hours operations are directly integrated with the ServiceNow® Change Management feature. 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 on 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.
    4. When a change request is approved, schedule the on/off actions for the associated resources as specified in the policy.
    5. Repeat the 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 Cost Management 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.

    Google Cloud only: The instance can be defined as a Managed instance groups (MIGs). MIGs let you operate applications on multiple identical VMs. You can make your workloads scalable and highly available by taking advantage of automated MIG services, including: auto-scaling, auto-healing, regional (multiple zone) deployment, and automatic updating.

    Business hours policy

    Business Hours policy example

    The Finance department policy example has the following settings:
    • The policy is active, which 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 that it takes for the resource to start and stop.

    Result of the example Business Hours policy

    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 the Business hours reports.
    • Generate and then auto-approve a change request for the change group.
    • Add the resource to the 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 the Business hours reports.
    • Generate a change request for members of the change group.
    • Add the resource to the 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 the Business hours reports.