Reserved Instances (RIs) and Savings Plans (SPs) can offer discounts, depending on their commitment plan, yet many businesses forgo the benefit and lose out on their potential savings rates. On top of that, managing the on-going changes and predicting long-term use is challenging and time consuming for most organizations. The solution? 

CloudCheckr's new Eco Optimization integration for Managed Service Provider (MSP) partners.

Using deep analytics, forecasting models, and the Reserved Instance Marketplace, Eco automatically purchases the optimal portfolio of commitments for you. Eco uses real-time tracking of RI and savings plan utilization to identify any decrease in usage so that instances can be sold back to the AWS Marketplace, if needed.

Eco enables you to get the most out of cloud commitment purchases, including:

• Fully utilizing commitments: Ensure maximum ROI on cloud commitment purchases with analysis, modification, and mapping of unused reserved instances and savings plans to resource demands.
• Managing commitment lifecycles: Ensure workloads are always running at optimal pricing by automating purchasing strategies for reserved instances in the AWS Marketplace throughout their lifecycle.
• Aligning finance & DevOps: Collaborate more effectively between Finance and DevOps teams by providing full visibility into compute consumption and automation of optimal reserved instances and savings plans strategies.

For more information on how MSPs can take advantage of the Eco Optimization integration within CloudCheckr CMx, please contact your Technical Account Manager.

Check out the docs

New Archive of Customer Success Webinars

Did you miss one of our webinars detailing new features and updates for CMx? Our archive of past Customer Success webinars can now be found in the Training / Education section of the Success Center.

Check out the archive

New Personal Dashboards

Have you ever wanted to create a dashboard of cost consumption and spend for a very specific workload that only you want more information about? Or create dashboards without interrupting shared content across teams or partners? Personal dashboards are here! 

With these dashboards, any user with access to cost data and reports can create their own dashboards as a one-stop shop for the data most relevant to them.

Your new personal dashboard is specific to you; unlike global dashboards, personal dashboards are currently only associated with the user who creates them. You can even create different personal dashboards for different types of data.

You can then select your dashboard the new Personal category using the Dashboard drop-down menu.

Check out the docs

Bug Fixes and Improvements

• Improved loading times on the AWS CloudTrail Events report. improvement 
• Improved the way taxes are processed for Azure CSP reservation purchases. improvement 
• Updated the AWS Business Support calculation to better handle discounts earned from Savings Plans. improvement 
• Resolved an issue where some in-app notifications had dead links that would send users to non-existing pages. fix 
• Resolved an issue where the List of Accounts page was displaying some uncredentialed accounts as having valid credentials. fix 
• Resolved an issue where the invoice generator was not displaying custom charge descriptions in certain scenarios. fix 

New Azure Reservation Billing Configuration Report

CloudCheckr’s new Azure Reservation Billing Configuration report allows CSPs to choose how Azure reservation fees are applied across their customers and subscriptions. You can set default fee assignment behavior and control fee assignment on a per-reservation basis, ensuring your chargebacks and invoices reflect the fees exactly how you need them.

The report shows all of the reservations owned within your CSP. You can use the controls on the page to filter the list by searching for specific Reservation IDs, Reservation Order IDs, or by Customer.

To access this feature, go to Billing > Configure > Azure Reservation Billing Configuration.

Check out the docs

Bug Fixes and Improvements

• Added support for Asia Pacific (Jakarta) AWS Region. announcement 
• Added the ability to export selected columns to the List of RDS DB Instances report. improvement 
• Resolved an issue where the BPC large export was not always generating for some Azure MAVs. fix 

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