Collections
The Collections page allows users to create groups of external cloud costs and Kubernetes objects in order to receive a unified view of all cloud spending. This is to leverage existing tags applied to cloud resources, without needing to rename them to match Kubernetes names. Collections will also avoid duplicate costs.
Kubernetes costs, also referred to as in-cluster costs, refer to spending on resources including nodes, disks, and network costs. They are monitored via the Assets dashboard. Cloud costs, also referred to as out-of-cluster or external costs, refer to spending on third party services such as services offered by cloud service providers. They are monitored via the Cloud Cost Explorer.
Creating a new collection
To begin, select Add a new Collection in the top right. If you have not created any collections yet, you should see a Add a Collection icon in the middle of your screen. You can select this instead. The ‘New Collection’ page opens. The headline for your page should be an auto-generated title. This will be the name of your collection, which you can change by selecting the pencil icon. You can provide a name and a category for your collection. Categories are custom labels you can add to multiple collections to allow for filtering of that category, if multiple collections are intended for the same team or function. Name and category can always be edited later.
Once you are satisfied with the name of your collection, you can add Kubernetes and cloud costs.
All Kubernetes and cloud spend sources will appear on this page under one of two columns: Costs in Collection, or Costs Not in Collection. When first creating your collection, there should be no costs already added. Therefore, you should select Costs Not in Collection to view a list of all available cost sources, or select Explore Costs.
Costs are then divided into two categories: Kubernetes and Cloud (see above for an explanation of these costs). You can toggle between the two groups using the Domain dropdown on the left of the page. For each group, you will see a total cost value displayed on the right of the page, above your cost table.
Costs are organized in a table, listed in descending order starting with the highest values. To add an individual item, hover your cursor over the item until you see a green Add button visible on the right of the page. Select Add to include that cost into your collection. You can add all your listed Kubernetes or cloud costs into a collection by selecting Add All, displayed next to your total cost. This is only available once you've added at least one filter. Once an item has been added to the collection, changes will be automatically saved.
You can filter and recategorize your cost table using Aggregate By and Add Filters. Aggregate By allows you to organize your costs by a listed category, and supports single and multi-aggregation. Add Filters allows for flexible filtering of your table items, including filtering by custom labels.
After having added items to your collection, selecting Costs in Collection will provide a complete list of all items, as well as key cost metrics including total and percentage costs of both Kubernetes and cloud items.
Your cloud provider may not provide a Resource ID for all cloud 'items'. Cloud costs without an associated resource ID are not supported currently.
Percentage spends refers to the total Kubernetes/Cloud cost within the collection to all Kubernetes/Cloud costs within your environment respectively, not the percentage of total spend within the collection. For example, if a collection contains $20 of Kubernetes spend and the total allocation data in that same window is $50, the percentage of Kubernetes spend will be 40%.
In the event there is cost overlap from conflicting Kubernetes and cloud costs, they will be reflected in a special Overlap category. Kubecost automatically subtracts the overlapping costs so that the totals seen for the collection are accurate and do not contain duplicate costs. Currently, overlap is not considered for shared costs and Load Balancer costs coming from workloads running on Azure and GCP clusters.
Managing collections
The Collections page will list all existing collections with a chart displaying cost over time and total cost. You can begin editing a collection by selecting it. You can also adjust your Collections display by adjusting the window of time, aggregating by item or kind, or filtering.
Selecting the three vertical dots in the top right of the collection tile will provide you with additional options:
Delete
Export as CSV
Export as PDF
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