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Cloud Cost Explorer

Cloud Cost is currently in beta. Please read the documentation carefully.
The Cloud Cost Explorer is a dashboard which provides visualization and filtering of your cloud spending. This dashboard includes the costs for all assets in your connected cloud accounts by pulling from those providers' Cost and Usage Reports (CURs) or other cloud billing reports.

Installation and configuration

Cloud Cost needs to be enabled first through Helm, using the following parameters:
kubecostModel:
cloudCost:
enabled: true
labelList:
isIncludeList: false
# format labels as comma separated string (ex. "label1,label2,label3")
labels: ""
topNItems: 1000
Enabling Cloud Cost is required. Optional parameters include:
  • labelList.labels: Comma separated list of labels; empty string indicates that the list is disabled
  • labelList.isIncludeList: If true, label list is a white list; if false, it is a black list
  • topNItems: number of sampled "top items" to collect per day
While Cloud Cost is enabled, it is recommended to disable Cloud Usage, which is more memory-intensive.
kubecostModel:
etlCloudUsage: false
Disabling Cloud Usage will restrict functionality of your Assets dashboard. This is intentional. Learn more about Cloud Usage here.

UI overview

Date range

You can adjust your displayed metrics using the date range feature, represented by Last 7 days, the default range. This will control the time range of metrics that appear. Select the date range of the report by setting specific start and end dates, or by using one of the preset options.

Aggregate filters

You can adjust your displayed metrics by aggregating your cost by category. Supported fields are Workspace, Provider, Billing Account, Service Item, as well as custom labels. The Cloud Costs Explorer dashboard supports single and multi-aggregation. See the table below for descriptions of each field.
Aggregation
Description
Billing Account
The ID of the billing account your cloud provider bill comes from. (ex: AWS Management/Payer Account ID, GCP Billing Account ID, Azure Billing Account ID)
Provider
Cloud provider (ex: AWS, Azure, GCP)
Service
Cloud provider services (ex: S3, microsoft.compute, BigQuery)
Workspace
Cloud provider account (ex: AWS Account, Azure Subscription, GCP Project)
Item
Individual items from your cloud billing report(s)
Labels
Labels/tags on your cloud resources (ex: AWS tags, Azure tags, GCP labels)

Edit

Selecting the Edit button will allow for additional filtering and pricing display options for your cloud data.

Add filters

You can filter displayed dashboard metrics by selecting Edit, then adding a filter. Filters can be created for the following categories (see descriptions of each category in the Aggregate filters table above):
  • Service
  • Workspace
  • Billing Account
  • Provider
  • Labels
Cost Metric
The Cost Metric dropdown allows you to adjust the displayed cost data based on different calculations. Cost Metric values are based on and calculated following standard FinOps dimensions and metrics, as seen in detail here. The four available metrics supported by the Cloud Costs Explorer are:
Cost Metric
Description
Amortized Net Cost
Net Cost with removed cash upfront fees and amortized (default)
Net Cost
Costs inclusive of discounts and credits. Will also include one-time and recurring charges.
List Cost
CSP pricing without any discounts
Invoiced Cost
Pricing based on usage during billing period

Table metrics

Your cloud cost spending will be displayed across your dashboard with several key metrics:
  • K8 Utilization: Percent of cost which can be traced back to Kubernetes cluster
  • Total cost: Total cloud spending
  • Sum of Sample Data: Only when aggregating by Item. Only lists the top cost for the timeframe selected. Displays that may not match your CUR.
All line items, after aggregation, should be selectable, allowing you to drill down to further analyze your spending. For example, when aggregating cloud spend by Service, you can select an individual cloud service (AmazonEC2, for example) and view spending, K8 utilization, and other details unique to that item.