Connections are how CloudZero manages the various Cost Sources that bring Billing, Resource, and other types of data into the platform.

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But First...

Every CloudZero customer must first connect an AWS Management/Payer Account to get started, so please confirm that you have followed the AWS Connection process before trying to add a Snowflake Connection.

How the Custom Connection Works

Using an AnyCost Adaptor, the platform can receive any cost data that you can transform into our Common Bill Format. Creating a Custom Connection will tell the platform which S3 bucket stores your Adaptor's cost data, and will allow us to show those costs alongside other Cost Sources in the Explorer, as well as enable anomaly alerts on that custom cost data.

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About CloudZero's Access to your AWS Accounts

AnyCost Adaptors write their cost data to S3 Buckets and CloudZero will need permissions to read from that bucket.

All of CloudZero's permissions are Read-Only
We have no access to data except where explicitly authorized.

Summary of Permissions:

• S3 Bucket
  • Get and List on the specific bucket created/being used for this Adaptor

Note: If you are saving into an S3 Bucket (in your AWS cloud) in any regions for which STS is not active by default (e.g. ap-east-1 or eu-south-1), make sure you activate those regions following the Managing AWS STS in an AWS Region guide.

Connect an AnyCost Adaptor

Open the Connections page

The Connections page can be found by going to the "gear" on the sidebar and selecting "Connections" or alternatively going to https://app.cloudzero.com/organization/connections

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Note: Admin Role Required

You must be a CloudZero Admin to add new Connections to the platform.

Connect to the S3 Bucket

On the Connections page you can see all of the Connections in your system. To connect to the cost data written by your custom AnyCost Adaptor, click the “Add New Connection” button.

On the next page, click the "Custom" tile and then click the "Get started" button.

The Add a New Custom Connection page will ask for several pieces of information, including details decided on when Writing your AnyCost Adaptor.

1. Connection Metadata

   • Cost Source: The description that will appear in the Cost Source Dimension and throughout the UI alongside AWS, Snowflake, Azure, GCP, etc. If you have written an Adaptor for the hypothetical "Simple Cloud" service, you would put "Simple Cloud" in this box.
   • Connection Name: The name of this particular connection to that Cost Source. Usually this includes something to distinguish between accounts, environments, and/or instances of the AnyCost adaptors. If you are sending cost data from the "Simple Cloud" service for both your production and dev environments, the Connectio Name might be "Simple Cloud PROD".
   • Expected Data Delivery Frequency: Optional, but if provided, will tell the CloudZero platform how often the AnyCost Adaptor will deliver data to the S3 bucket, in hours. This helps the platform determine the health of the connection.

2. S3 Bucket Information

   • AWS Connection: This is the AWS Connection with the S3 Bucket that the AnyCost Adaptor will be writing Common Bill Format files into.
   • Bucket Name: You will need to create an S3 Bucket (or use an existing one) and apply an additional CloudZero IAM role to grant permission to access that bucket. Please see the AnyCost Documentation for details on what to do. Once you have created the bucket, enter the name here and generate the new IAM policy below.
   • IAM Policy Generator: Generate a policy definition using the name of your S3 Bucket and update your IAM Policy for the CloudZero role you granted.
   • Bucket Path: The path within the S3 Bucket where CloudZero will check for cost data. Do not include leading or trailing slashes in the path. my/file/path not /my/file/path/. As noted in the AnyCost Adaptor documentation, this must be a folder and cannot be the root of the S3 Bucket.

3. Click the Save button.

Confirm on the Connections page

Once complete, your Custom Connection will appear on the CloudZero Connections page in the Billing Connections table.

CloudZero will then attempt to connect to the S3 Bucket, retrieve the data, validate it, and then process it.

Once the connection has been verified, the Health column will update from “Pending Data” to “Healthy”. Discovery can take up to an hour. It can take up to a day to synchronize new accounts before you see cost data in the Explorer.

The Health column will be green or red and show the overall connection health. If something changes on your side and CloudZero can no longer connect to the S3 bucket or something about your Adaptor isn't writing data correctly, the Health will change and provide details on why CloudZero cannot connect or process the data.

Connecting Other Cost Sources

Additionally, you may want CloudZero to help with your AWS, Snowflake, or Azure costs.

Start by learning about CloudZero Connections, or choosing a Cost Source from the What's Next section below: