topic Re: Cost incurred for idle databricks cluster runtime in Data Governance

Cost incurred for idle databricks cluster runtime

nikhil_parab — Thu, 07 May 2026 13:53:17 GMT

Hi Team,

I have created databricks finops dashboard and within that I have provided recommendations on cluster auto termination. But I wanted add one more column like how much we can save after reducing auto termination time. How can I add that in my dashboard? Please assist

This is my table.

Workspace	Cluster	Owner	Recommendation
XXXXXXXXXXXX	XXXXXXXXXXXX	XXXXXXXXXXXX	NO ACTION NEEDED
XXXXXXXXXXXX	XXXXXXXXXXXX	XXXXXXXXXXXX	ENABLE AUTO TERMINATION
XXXXXXXXXXXX	XXXXXXXXXXXX	XXXXXXXXXXXX	NO ACTION NEEDED
XXXXXXXXXXXX	XXXXXXXXXXXX	XXXXXXXXXXXX	REDUCE AUTO TERMINATION TIME TO 30 MINUTES
XXXXXXXXXXXX	XXXXXXXXXXXX	XXXXXXXXXXXX	REDUCE AUTO TERMINATION TIME TO 30 MINUTES

Re: Cost incurred for idle databricks cluster runtime

nayan_wylde — Thu, 07 May 2026 15:01:08 GMT

For each cluster:

Savings = Avoidable Idle Time × Hourly Cost

Where:

Avoidable Idle Time (minutes) = estimated minutes the cluster kept running after it became idle, beyond the recommended termination window.
Hourly Cost = DBU cost + (optional) cloud compute cost per hour.

Most environments don’t have a clean “idle_started” event, so a robust method is:

Identify job activity or command activity windows
Find gaps between activity windows while the cluster was still running
Any gap longer than recommended auto-termination implies waste beyond the recommended threshold

Example definition
For each “running session” of a cluster:

If there is a gap between last activity and next activity (or shutdown) of G minutes
Then the avoidable portion is:

avoidable minutes=max⁡(0, G−recommended_autoterm_minutes)\text{avoidable minutes} = \max(0,\; G - \text{recommended\_autoterm\_minutes})avoidable minutes=max(0,G−recommended_autoterm_minutes)

Re: Cost incurred for idle databricks cluster runtime

nikhil_parab — Wed, 20 May 2026 20:32:30 GMT

Thank you @nayan_wylde will you be able to provide query for this?