Getting Started With Cloud Cost Optimization
The following topics will help you get started with Flexera’s Cloud Cost Optimization:
| • | Cloud Cost Optimization Help Topics |
| • | Cloud Cost Optimization Training Videos |
| • | Common Cloud Cost Optimization Controls |
Cloud Cost Optimization Help Topics
Cloud Cost Optimization documentation is organized into the following sections:
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Describes how currency is handled in Cloud Cost Optimization billing information. |
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Covers custom and shared dashboards. |
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Explains how to configure Cloud Cost Optimization to read your billing data. |
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Discusses the use of billing centers with a focus on cost dimensions and billing center hierarchies. |
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Explains how the ITAM and SaaS spend is analyzed. |
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Explains how to use the Tabular View for analyzing cloud spend. |
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Describes the capabilities and potential uses of rule-based dimensions. Users can apply rule-based dimensions on the Cloud dashboards and the Tabular View to look at their costs from meaningful new perspectives and provide new insights important to their business. |
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Describes how to make flexible billing adjustments, based on customizable rules, by a variety of dimensions. |
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Describes the Bill Processing Status dashboard to view the status of your bill connects. |
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Describes the sample reports that you can create in Cloud Cost Optimization. |
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Explains how to create and manage cloud budgets. |
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Describes the Commitments page in Cloud Cost Optimization. This page shows information about your RIs and savings plans for the selected organization for a 30-day rolling window. |
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Describes automated optimization capabilities that identify savings opportunities and help you set up automated actions to realize potential savings and prevent future waste. |
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Provides a view of your organization's Total Potential Savings from recommendations, and the ability to dig into the recommendations and share them with your stakeholders. |
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Helps you identify significant changes in your cloud spend and track down where they are coming from to take the necessary action to get them under control. |
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Provides links to the Cloud Cost Optimization APIs. |
Cloud Cost Optimization Training Videos
There are training videos available in the Flexera Learning Center (login required) to help learn more about using Cloud Cost Optimization.
Common Cloud Cost Optimization Controls
The following sections describe the common controls used in the Cloud Cost Optimization user interface.
| • | Date Selector |
| • | Cost Type Selector |
| • | Dimension Selector |
Many of the Cloud Cost Optimization pages contain a date selector, which changes the time range to which the data on the current page applies. Click the date selector to open the picker. Some pages allow the granularity of data to be selected between Daily, Monthly, Quarterly, and Biannually. Other pages only support Monthly granularity but allow you to pick the time range from which to show data. A convenient list of common date selections (Quick Filters such as Past 3 Months or Past Year) is provided and can be set with a single click.
Each date selection query has its limits:
| • | Daily = 31-day maximum |
| • | Monthly = 24-month maximum |
| • | Quarterly = 8-quarter maximum |
| • | Biannually = 2-year maximum |
After the data selector has been set, its configuration is saved as you navigate across other pages.
Many pages offer the choice to view different cost types based on your use case. These options currently focus on amortizing one-time costs. On any page with the cost type option, your selection is reflected in the cost data on that page. On any page that does not have the option, the costs shown are unamortized.
Cost type in Cloud Cost Optimization is divided into the following category: Amortization
Amortizing costs is defined as taking one-time costs and spreading the cost out over the lifetime of the purchase. If such a cost were shown unamortized, then the full cost of that item is attributed to the time of the purchase. If a cost were amortized, then the cost would be divided into all of the hours of the duration of the cost and shown in each hour.
The simplest example of such a cost would be an up-front purchase of a Reserved Instance. Let's assume we purchase a 1-year Reserved Instance from AWS on January 5, 2018 at 3:00 PM and it cost us $15,000. Here is how that purchase will be shown under both scenarios:
| • | Unamortized—The full $15,000 shows in cost data on January 5, 2018. |
| • | Amortized—The full cost is divided by the number of hours in the lifespan of the item (there are 8,760 hours in a year), and the result is attributed to each hour in the lifespan. In this case, we would see a $1.71 charge on every single hour between January 5, 2018 3:00 PM and January 5, 2019 2:00 PM. |
Dimension refers to labels or metadata associated with items in your bill. Some dimension examples include category, service, or resource type.
After selecting the dimension, you can see the cost breakdown. In some pages there is only one option to choose from while other pages allow multiple dimensions to be selected. The selected dimension is used to breakdown the costs in some graphs on the page.
Cloud Cost Optimization offers the following types of cost dimensions:
| • | Cloud Cost Optimization-Generated Cost Dimension: Category |
| • | Cloud Provider Bill-Based Cost Dimensions |
| • | Microsoft Azure Modern Commerce Agreement (MCA) Bill-Based Data Dimensions |