CostFormation
CloudZero CostFormation enables you to harness the CloudZero platform to view your cloud costs in the context of your business and engineering needs. With CostFormation, you can define Custom Dimensions which consist of rules and conditions that are used to assign your cloud charges to different elements based on billing line item data as well as other sources like resource tags.
For example, you may want to view your costs in the context of operating environments where your environments are Production, DevOps, and Development. Costs can usually be broken down into these environments by account with several accounts being associated with each environment, but there are some cases where the account number cannot be used.
To be able to see your costs in this Dimension, you can define a Custom Dimension named Environment
that contains three rules, one for each of your operating environments. The rules would define the Element name (i.e. Production
, DevOps
, and Development
) and then define the conditions for when a charge should be attributed to a given element. If Production
resources are always deployed into accounts A, B, and C, then the conditions of the Production
rule would specify if Account
equals A
, B
, or C
, then those charges should be assigned to the Production
element.
Environment:
Name: Environment
Source: Account
Rules:
- Type: Group
Name: Production
Conditions:
- Equals:
- 123456789010
- 123456789011
- 123456789012
- And:
- Equals: snowflake1234
- Source: ProductFamily
Equals: warehouse
- Source: Resource
Contains: prod
- And:
- Equals: snowflake1234
- Source: ProductFamily
Equals: database
- Source: Resource
Equals: live_billing```
- Type: Group
Name: DevOps
Conditions:
- Source: CZ:Defined:Category
Equals: Cloud Management
- Source: Service
Contains: Support
- Type: Group
Name: Development
Conditions:
- Equals:
- 123456789013
- 123456789014
CostFormation uses a YAML based language with syntax which can be used to define your Custom Dimensions. These definitions are written in a CostFormation Definitions file which can be uploaded into CloudZero where the definitions are published, enabling the Custom Dimensions to be used in other features such as the Cost Explorer or Views, just like any of the Core Dimensions in CloudZero.
Using Custom Dimensions in CloudZero
Once published, all the Custom Dimensions defined in the CostFormation Definition File are visible from the Explorer by all users. They are available in the Group By selector as well as in the Filters selections. Users can use these custom dimensions to group and/or filter the costs in the explorer. They can be used in conjunction with any of the other dimensions for grouping and filtering your cost data.
All published Custom Dimensions can also be used in conjunction with Views as the either the Principal Dimension or as a Filter Dimension.
Updated 11 months ago