Success Center Reorganization

The CloudCheckr Success Center has been reorganized to help you find the information you need more quickly and easily. Previously, finding a specific topic could be difficult, as it could have been living under buried headings. Now, for example, if you're looking for a topic related to Cost, you'll find it under the Cost heading. 

It's important to note that nothing has been deleted, and all custom URLs still work.  With this update our topics just now live in more straightforward categories.

Note: On the Home page, the drop-down box for each category currently opens at the bottom of the page. This will be fixed in an upcoming release.

Improvements to Azure Retail non-USD Costs

We have improved the way we calculate non-USD Azure retail costs.  Previously we were leveraging the Azure Retail APIs directly for non-USD cost, which sometimes resulted in costs that didn’t match the same rates published to the customer reconciliation file.  Working with Microsoft support we determined that the exchange rates for the Retail API and reconciliation files were not updated at the same frequency.  With this update we now leverage the same data from the reconciliation file, ensuring that the costs we display in our app will match the data on the customer side.

Please note that a reload is required to have these changes applied against any historic months.

Bug Fixes and Improvements

• Updated Azure EA & MCA edit credential workflow improvement 
• Added support for the AWS EC2 instance family: eg1 improvement 
• Addressed an issue preventing some Azure VM Right-Sizing and Inventory Reports from populating fix 
• Addressed an issue preventing some AWS MAVs from showing complete EC2 trend data fix

Updated AWS CIS Benchmark report to v1.4

We have updated our CIS Benchmark report to version 1.4.  This update required several changes to our existing report, including re-ordering and re-numbering most of the controls. Additionally, we've changed the Scored/Not Scored column to Manual/Automated.

Check out the docs

Updated Best Practice Checks

We have updated the Stale IAM Users best practice check to identify any IAM user who has not signed in within the last 45 days. Previously, this check identified users who had not signed in within 90 days.

We have also added the following best practice checks:

• Regions Not Enforcing EBS Volumes Encryption Upon Creation
• S3 Buckets Not Configured to Block Public Access
• RDS Instances Without Encryption Enabled
• IAM Users With Multiple Access Keys
• Expired SSL/TLS Certificates Stored in IAM
• Regions Without IAM Access Analyzer Enabled
• IAM Users in Multi-Account Environments Not Being Managed via Identify Federation or AWS Organizations
• S3 Buckets Without MFA Delete Enabled
• S3 Buckets Not Logging Object-Level Write Events
• S3 Buckets Not Logging Object-Level Read Events
• S3 Buckets with data not Discovered, Classified, and Secured
• Log Metric Filter and Alarm Do Not Exist for Changes to AWS Organizations
• Network ACLs Allowing Ingress from 0.0.0.0/0 to Administration Ports

Note: The IAM policy associated with your AWS account will need the following new permissions to fully support these updates:
     "s3:GetBucketPublicAccessBlock"
     "s3:GetBucketVersioning"
     "ec2:GetEbsEncryptionByDefault"

Bug Fixes and Improvements

• Improved the CloudTrail Aggregate S3 Bucket Credential process to require S3 bucket region. improvement 
• Improved the load times for the AWS RI Amortization report in Multi-Account Views. improvement 
• Fixed an issue that prevented some custom inventory emails from sending. fix 
• Fixed an issue that prevented the get_resources_ec2_details_V4 API call from returning data. fix 
• Fixed an issue that prevented the Best Practice Email from sending when AWS Trusted Advisor checks were not available. fix 
• Removed the EC2 Security Group Connections and VPC Flow Log Connections reports due to reduced customer interest and to streamline our navigation and interface. Additionally, we have deprecated the Legacy Azure RI Configuration page in preparation for our new Azure RI Configuration setup solution, which will be released in the coming weeks.  improvement

CloudCheckr’s new Well-Architected Readiness Advisor report helps MSPs streamline the process of delivering AWS Well-Architected Reviews, while ensuring that your customers’ AWS environments are continuously in compliance with the Well-Architected Framework.

This new report, which can be found under the Total Compliance menu of the report navigation, automatically centralizes CloudCheckr's Best Practice Checks and aligns them with their respective Well-Architected Review questions.  

The report also allows you to view, add, and edit notes for each question. Notes added to the Readiness Advisor report are synchronized between the AWS Well-Architected Tool and CloudCheckr, so that any updates made within the Readiness Advisor report will be synced back to the AWS Console upon save. 

Check out the docs

Track Savings Plan commitments with the Savings Plan Runway Chart

If you want to maintain a healthy discount coverage using Savings Plans, then you need better visibility into Savings Plan expiration times and consumption in order to plan out your future coverage. 

You can now track your Savings Plan commitments using the new Runway chart on the Savings Plan Analytics report. This chart shows you the total commitment of your Savings Plans within the next 3, 6, or 12 months. This data can also be compared with the last 3 or 6 months, giving you a more informed idea of your past, present, and future Savings Plan commitments. 

By looking at the total commitments of all your Savings Plans on the Runway chart, you can more easily decide if you need to purchase additional Savings Plans to cover periods of peak consumption or for months when your current Savings Plans are set to expire.

View Savings Plan details using the Inventory table

For in-depth details of your Savings Plans, you can now use the Inventory table on the Savings Plan Analytics report. This table shows the Type, Status, Commitment types, Fees, and more related to each of your Savings Plans. By filtering and searching the table, you can find the data you need for specific Savings Plans more quickly and easily. You can also export this data to a CSV file for further analysis.

Check out the docs

Create custom cost dashboards using Tag Key-Value pair

CMx Dashboards now include the ability to group by or filter to one or many Tag Key-Value pairs. This allows you to generate unique cost-over-time reports by business unit, environment, project, and more using Tag Key combinations.

Grouping by a Tag Key generates a comparison of all associated values. From here, you can further refine the results by filtering down to particular Tag Key-Value pairs.

Check out the docs

See your AWS Account Friendly Names in your Dashboards

Using our Tag Mapping feature, you can direct the costs from specific tags or properties to a custom tagging structure, allowing you to more efficiently organize your costs, whether you have five for 5,000 tags in your cloud account. With this update, we've improved that bulk creation process, giving you the ability to pair tag conditions with property conditions using the CSV file upload. 

Example upload:

We have also made improvements to errors when processing the CSV files. The row number and reason for any failures will be displayed at the end of the upload process, allowing you to identify what failed and why.

Check out the docs

Updates to Advanced Grouping Monthly & Weekly Emails

We have improved the user experience when configuring emails within the Advanced Grouping report to ensure the proper settings are chosen. When aggregating your saved filter by week or month, you will no longer be able to save an incompatible daily email. If you do need a daily email, be sure to update your save filter to aggregate the data daily.

Please note that if you load an existing saved filter that has an incompatible email/aggregate filter, you will see a message to update and re-save your email settings.

Bug Fixes and Improvements

• AWS Account Friendly Names were not showing in some reports. fix 
• Some payers were inadvertently classified as a payee. fix 
• Some consolidated billing emails from MAVs were not being sent fix 
• Improved resource inventory collection for the AWS China Region. improvement 

Use CloudCheckr CMx to manage your Azure MCA accounts

You can now view and manage the costs associated with your Azure MCA account in CloudCheckr CMx. To add your MCA account(s), select the MCA or Enterprise Agreement Account option when credentialing a new account.  

You will need an Azure Portal user with access to the desired MCA account, with Billing Admin (or higher) permissions, to complete configuration.

Note: You can use this new credentialing process to add your Enterprise Agreement accounts. The previous Enterprise Agreement credentialing method, which required API keys, can still be accessed by selecting the Enterprise Agreement Legacy Account option.

Check out the docs

Streamlined the function to add new CMx Dashboard panes and pages

We’ve made it easier for Admin users to add a new pane or entire page when managing their Dashboards.   

Within the Dashboard page, clicking the +NEW button gives you the option to either:

• Create a New Pane within the current Dashboard; or
• Create a New Dashboard Page to edit as desired.

Check out the docs

Bug Fixes and Improvements

• Some uncredentialed accounts were showing a valid credential flag. fix 
• Improved Dashboard loading times. improvement 
• AWS Account Friendly Names were not showing in some reports. fix 

Use CloudCheckr CMx to get AWS Savings Plans purchase recommendations!

Our new AWS Savings Plans Recommendations report gives you the ability to create a detailed, customized list of purchasing recommendations, showing your potential savings over on-demand pricing.

The report consists of two key features:

• Dashboard-style panes where you can visualize your covered and uncovered spend.
• A recommendation builder where you can create customized recommendations based on user-defined filter criteria.  You can use this builder to compare similar recommendations side-by-side or create a menu of multiple options for review.

To access the report, navigate to Home > Cost Savings > SP Recommendations. You can also search for SP Recommendations in the report search bar at the top of the application.

Please note that the IAM Policy configured for your account must have ce:GetSavingsPlansPurchaseRecommendation permissions.

Check out the docs

Access our updated release notes experience directly in CMx

You can now access our updated release notes experience directly from the CMx application by clicking the Settings icon in the top-right of the app and selecting What's New?

That will present you with a pop-up containing our full, recent release notes.  From this pop-up, you can search for updates, link out to https://releasenotes.cloudcheckr.com/, or subscribe to future updates.

Bug Fixes and Improvements

• Updated the image that displays while a dashboard pane is being generated. improvement 
• Improved messaging when no data is returned in the Advanced Grouping report. improvement 
• Added support for Puerto Rico within Azure Retail Costs. improvement 
• In some scenarios, the Elastic MapReduce Inventory report would error when loading additional pages. fix 
• Fixed a unique scenario where an Azure Subscription could lose its EA billing status. fix

Amazon Connect Split Into Three Services announcement 

We have created two additional services to provide better visibility and control over costs associated with the Amazon Connect service.  In addition to seeing Amazon Connect within your Service filters, you will now also see Amazon Contact Lens and Amazon Contact Center Telecommunications.  

This update allows for greater granularity when reviewing usage and costs from Amazon Connect.  And for those of you applying custom charges or discounts to these costs, you now have greater control over how those updates are applied. 

Please note that if you did already have a custom charge applied to the Amazon Connect service, that same charge will automatically be applied to both Amazon Contact Lens and Amazon Contact Center Telecommunications costs.  This will ensure no impact to your costs.  You can de-select these new services from your custom charges if you so wish.  However, we do advise that you review any Tag Mappings based on that service to ensure your tags are being mapped appropriately.

Bug Fix

• Addressed an issue where the Alert Results page was displaying tags in the incorrect fields. fix 

RELEASE NOTES 

Create unique Dashboards for yourself, your team, or customers!

CMx Admin users now have the ability to create Custom Dashboards. 

These Dashboards can be personalized with visualizations and data tailored to the needs of specific customers or business units. 

• Create and manage metrics across your entire business with a consistent dashboard solution for each department or team.
• Build unique dashboards for each of your customers to elevate the services you are providing to them.

Custom Dashboards can be made visible to all accounts or restricted to a subset of accounts/account groups as desired.

Please note that Non-Admin users can view Custom Dashboards made available to them by CMx Admins, but cannot edit the data or visualizations shown.

Check out the docs

Bug Fixes and Improvements FIX 

• Improved load times on the AWS Historic Monthly Billing Summary report IMPROVEMENT
• Improved messaging when required data is not available to build Savings Plans Analytics report charts IMPROVEMENT 
• Under certain circumstances, the AWS Security Permissions page would fail to load FIX 
• Some Tag Mapping CSV uploads were failing to save FIX

RELEASE NOTES 

Savings Plans Analytics and Trends announcement 

Better understand your Savings Plans consumption and utilization by quickly identifying your coverage, savings, utilization, and waste. See your savings and waste trends over customizable timeframes and identify your overall Savings Plans efficiency.

CMx Dashboards improvement 

If you wished you could see a full-page report from your CMx Dashboard, you now can! Every CMx Dashboard pane has a new “Expand” feature which will create a full-page report of your underlying dashboard pane. Expand allows you to see additional details about your data and provides better context for your analysis.

Additionally, we've added more data points to the X and Y selection options for each dashboard pane, giving more options to how you can visualize data.

API UPDATES improvement 

CMx Dashboard APIs - If you wish to retrieve CMx Dashboard data, you can now use the CMx Dashboard API to collect multi-cloud cost data.

Bug Fixes

• Legacy Dashboards viewed in CMx can sometimes have panes cut off or hidden fix 
• Reseller configuration page could sometimes render portions of the screen and not the whole page. fix 
• Custom login pages could sometimes not display a custom image. fix 
• In-app notifications could sometimes have dead links and would send users to non-existing pages. fix 
• Improved Advanced Grouping query times by reducing the number of network requests required to return the requested dataset. improvement  
• Some Azure billing-only subscriptions were not able to be updated with credentials. fix 
• Resolved edge cases preventing some inventory data from being collected. fix 
• Under unique circumstances, Azure Advisor tab was missing from the Best Practice report. fix 
• Under unique circumstances, AWS Trusted Advisor tab was missing from the Best Practice report. fix 
• Under unique circumstances, the AWS Historical Summary report would sometimes fail to load. fix

AZURE UPDATES improvement

Added ability to populate historic reservation purchases under CSP.

However, when querying Azure CSP reservations, we are limited to 3 months of historical data. With this update, we’ve implemented a method that allows us to work with customers to backfill the data we’re unable to obtain programmatically.  Please reach out to Support if you have any reservations that are not showing up in your cost reports.