CMx Notification Bell Provides Credential Status and Notification Count

CloudCheckr had added a color-coded badge to the Notification Bell within CMx that indicates the state of the credential status for the selected account. 

• A blue badge indicates that the account credentials are valid, and new information has been retrieved regarding that account. 
• A yellow badge indicates that the credentials for that account are missing, and no data has been retrieved. 
• A red badge indicates that the credentials for that account are invalid. 

Additionally, a notification count will be displayed within the Notification Bell badge which tracks the total number of notifications.

Improvements and Bug Fixes

29.5

Improvements

• We have improved the calculation of Azure VM Recommendations for CSP and EA reports by basing estimates on the Retail Reservation rates.
• We have added support for the AWS RDS Multi-Availability Zone readable stand-by to Inventory Reports, Recommendations Reports, and RDS Instance Reports.
• Resource tag data is now visible within Untagged Resources for the AWS DynamoDB service.
• We have added DynamoDB Untagged Resources to the BPC list.
• We have improved the performance for BPC Untagged Resources.

Bugs

• We have fixed an issue where the List of EC2 Instances Report was displaying incorrect dates and listing dates out of order. 
• We have fixed an issue where the ‘All’ AWS Service Condition within Tag Mapping was not filtering the service list correctly.

Updated Cost Allocator Property Drop-Down List

CloudCheckr has added a filter to the Property drop-down list within the Cost Allocator. Additionally, the Property drop-down list is now sorted alphabetically for Azure and AWS.

Updated Tag Mapping Drop-Down List

CloudCheckr has added an option to the main page which allows Tag Keys and Tag Values to be filtered. A search box has also been added which will query all available Tag Keys and Tag Values. Additionally, the Tag Keys and Tag Values drop-down list is now sorted alphabetically for Azure and AWS. 

Improvements and Bug Fixes

29.4

Improvements

• We have added resource tag data visibility for the AWS DynamoDB service.
• We have added an accordion at the top of the Notifications Center for CMx which will provide information related to account health. A check that the associated account possess valid credentials will now be performed and displayed, along with a link to manage credentials. Billing data and a link to manage billing data is now displayed.
• We have added support for Store Classes Glacier Instant Retrieval, One Zone Infrequent Access, Intelligent Tiering, and Deep Archive within the S3 Summary Report Email.

Bugs

• We have fixed an issue with S3 Intelligent Tiering data miscalculating the cost by removing the S3 Intelligent Tiering storage class from S3 Summary.
• We have fixed an issue where large exports of Reserved Instances were not sending the CSV file or PDF to emails when on the list of EC2 Reserved Instance.
• We have fixed an issue where mismatching resource meters caused some SQL databases to not displaying within the SQL database rightsizing report.

Improvements and Bug Fixes

29.3

Improvements

• We have added the option to export large Reserved Instance Reports CSV files to email. CloudCheckr is now able to generate CSV files in the background and send the export link to the associated email inbox.
• We have added a new BPC to check for idle Azure elastic pools. 
• We have added a new section within the cost savings report which displays idle Azure elastic pools. 
• We have added support for One Zone - Infrequent Storage Class within S3 Cost and Detail reports.

Bug Fixes

• We fixed an issue where irrelevant data was displayed within exported RDS Utilization Summary PDFs. 
• We have fixed an issue where in some situations Reserved Instance Recommendation reports for EC2 were not populating any data.
• We fixed an issue where the price for AWS Glacier Deep Archive Unblended was being adjusted as a tiered service. We recommend reloading the data for the month of November to reflect the correct values within your bill.
• We fixed an issue where the Jira Integrations expand button within the Integrations settings would not complete the expansion action when selected.
• We fixed an issue where AWS Managed keys which had been automatically rotated were displaying within the CMK BPC.
• We fixed an issue where Saved Filter emails were not being sent from MAV. 
• We fixed an issue where CloudWatch Alarms reports grouped by AWS Account ID were unable to load.
• We fixed an issue where the AWS MAV Single Monthly Summary displayed daily costs instead of the month to date total.
• We fixed an issue where large API exports without designated start and end dates were submitting as 0 days, rather than the default 14 days.
• We fixed an issue where in some cases the Azure cost may have been categorized incorrectly.  This may have potentially affected Azure SQL Database or GRS Storage, although the reported cost totals were correct.

29.2

Improvements

• CloudCheckr now supports AWS Regions Europe (Spain) -eu-south-2, and Asia Pacific (Hydrabad) -ap-south-2.
• When Automation settings are configured to automatically process non-ignored items, it will no longer be dependent on the discovery job to request AWS to start/stop instances. The request will be made at the scheduled time.
• The edit_custom_billing_charge_monthly_percent_v2 API call will now update custom billing charges that are filtered by account family.
• Retail Rates are now used to calculate the cost of newer versions of RIs from the VM Recommendations.
• The Azure Discovery Job now supports DevTestConsumption prices for Inventory.

Bug Fixes

• We fixed an issue where the Single Month Summary Report was displaying invalid Savings Plans data.
• We fixed an issue where additional accounts were displaying as blank within RI recommendation reports.
• We fixed an issue where in some instances S3 Inventory Discovery did not successfully complete.
• We fixed an issue where Unknown Service Category displayed for some service categories.
• We fixed an issue where the MCA Azure Billing Collector was sometimes reporting that no accounts were available.

29.1 

Improvements

• We have added support for the Europe (Zurich) AWS Region.  
• We have added billing support for several new AWS S3 Storage Classes and Volume Types.
• We have added a text box above the Recommendations report to indicate that the provided estimates were based on Retail rates for both CSP and EA reports. This text box is visible to all account types which have access to the Recommendations report. Discounts obtained in the agreement with MS will not be taken into account in this report.
• We have added support to the Edit Billing Configuration report for collecting DevTest consumption offers.
• We have added support for the new Glacier Staging S3 Storage class.

Bug Fixes

• We fixed an issue where AWS L1 unlock did not unlock all corresponding L2s.
• We fixed an issue where setting MRU caused the scoped landing page within the app to load incorrectly. 
• We fixed an issue where the EC2 Instance Rightsizing export was not honoring Saved Filter criteria. 
• We fixed an issue where the menu text displayed for export functionality on Savings Plan Analytics report was incorrect. 

Updated CMx MAV Drawer Table

Cloudcheckr has updated the CMx MAV edit drawer so that users can view a list of accounts along with the credential status. Additionally, the Account name now contains a link connected to the accounts Edit drawer, which will allow for easier access when taking corrective actions.

Improvements and Bug Fixes

29.0

Improvements

• The Azure SQL servers UI now displays databases and elastic pools within the details.
• We improved RI recommendations in certain scenarios where data within Azure was not complete.

Bug Fixes

• We fixed an issue within the CMx dashboards where data from the Advanced Grouping report became unavailable when attempting to print a chart.
• We fixed an issue where duplicate RDS storage snapshots would display with free allocation tags.
• We fixed an issue where some devtest subscriptions were incorrectly calculating hourly rates.

New Profit Analysis Dashboard Pane in CMx

CloudCheckr is introducing a new pane type called Profit Analysis which allows CMx users to view profit broken down in a variety of customizable ways. CMx users may view their profit by cloud account over a user configured timeline. The total cost is broken down by unblended cost and list cost, while the profit achieved is highlighted. CMx users may filter their results by Service Category and Resource Tags, and configure their preferred chart type. 

CMx users with access to both actual (unblended) cost and list cost may build a dashboard consisting of multiple Profit Analysis panes to break down their profit by several key Service Categories, and over various timelines. 

Retail Rate Calculation Without A Matching Retail Meter 

The process within CloudCheckr for calculating the Retail rate with Azure has been improved. Unfortunately in some cases Azure is not making available a meter and price, resulting in costs ingested with an unmatched Retail Meter being calculated at a rate of $0. 

To avoid this situation, when no matching Azure cost can be identified for a given meter to ingested, CloudCheckr is now passing through Azure Standard cost instead. This ensures that no Retail price will be represented at a lower value than the actual cost, helping those customers who invoice or recover costs based on Retail cost type.

Improvements and Bug Fixes

28.5

Improvements

• We are aware of an issue where the Advanced Grouping report crashes in a Chrome browser when generating large amounts of data, given Chrome’s lower memory limit vs other broswers. To work around this limitation, we recommend either using another browser in these large memory use conditions, or ordering the Group By fields with the ‘Location’ field before the ‘Resource Group’ field.

Bug Fixes

• We fixed an issue where the instance name within the instance details of exported EC2 Cost Details reports were not displayed.
• We fixed an issue where the Hours Running field within History by Virtual Machine displayed an inaccurate value.
• We fixed an issue where the MultiAZ value calculated for an RDS Reserve Instance was incorrect.
• We fixed an issue where Azure Cost savings values reported in MAV were inaccurate under certain conditions.

Amazon DynamoDB Standard-IA Support

CloudCheckr now supports Amazon DynamoDB Standard-Infrequent Access (IA) pricing for Provisioned IOPS. You can now track and report on Amazon DynamoDB Standard-Infrequent Access tables through the CloudCheckr Resource Summary Page and Best Practice Checks.  Provisioned IOPS are a new EBS volume type designed to deliver predictable, high performance for I/O intensive workloads, such as database applications, that rely on consistent and fast response times. 

Amazon RDS Custom Database Instances - Customer-Supplied Support

CloudCheckr now supports RDS Custom Database Instances for the Customer-Supplied model. Now within CloudCheckr you can track costs associated with your existing Oracle Database software licenses for Amazon RDS Custom. With Amazon RDS Custom, you pay for the database instance, storage, and data transfer directly. You also pay for any resources provisioned on your behalf by Amazon RDS Custom or for any resources you provision yourself in configuring your database environment. Under the Customer-Supplied model, you can run Amazon RDS Custom using your existing Oracle Database software licenses.

Bugs Fixes and Improvements

27.5

• Improved retail cost calculation for Azure CSP reserved instances
• Added support for the new 'customer provided' Oracle License Model
• Resolved missing reservations within Azure CSP cost data under certain edge conditions
• Resolved latency for 'per usage hour charge or credit' feature in custom charges
• Improved the memory consumption associated with AWS build reports
• Resolved incorrect arithmetic logic in the cost changes report
• Resolved issues with the inclusion/exclusion checkbox option for account family filtering

27.6

• Improved CloudFormation Stack Policy to remove reference to API calls
• Resolved Azure reservation configuration display discrepancy observed by specific customers
• Resolved performance issue with Azure Tag Lookup Resources Page
• Resolved Advance Grouping PDF export graph showing as incomplete
• Improved instance type family handling to resolve issues observed by specific customers
• Resolved mismatch between discovery classes and Best Practice Checks  for various S3 checks
• In certain edge cases, we observed and resolved reporting issues with VPC EMR filters
• Resolved auto scaling data issue for inventory summary report export seen in certain edge cases

28.0

• Resolved incorrect page redirection for tag lookup in Cost Alerts
• Improved cleanup snapshots report to account for larger amounts of data
• Added support for Amazon DynamoDB Standard-Infrequent Access tables
• Resolved reporting issues in Cost Savings seen in certain edge cases
• Improved error logging for Azure Active Directory SSO
• Resolved historical data retrieval issue for Cost Dashboards seen in certain edge cases
• Updated privacy policy display to partners with white labeling enabled
• Resolved incorrect x-axis scale in the CPU hourly time graph of EC2 List of Instances

Azure CSP & EA Cost Ingestion 

As reported in-application, Microsoft has intermittently and unexpectedly changed the format of its Tag data response such that the JSON cannot be parsed, inhibiting cost ingestion for many but not all Payers. 

While Microsoft works to address this issue, CloudCheckr has developed workaround code that will allow costs to be ingested, with the tag import skipped for any data rows impacted. 

This workaround code was deployed as part of Release 27.5 (July 15 in US Production), and only skips the tag if the JSON is in the improper format. Please note that all features related to tags may contain inaccurate data until this issue has been addressed by Microsoft. CloudCheckr is logging the “skipped row” event so that CloudCheckr Support can properly respond to any questions you may have. 

Azure Retail Calculation for Reserved Instance Purchases (CSP & EA)

Beginning with Release 27.1 on May 19, CloudCheckr is now calculating the retail rate for reservation purchases (both CSP and EA). This will automatically start applying for both the current, and all future months.

If you wish to update historic months, please contact CloudCheckr Technical Support or your Technical Account Manager (TAM) to get those months updated.

It is our expectation that the Retail and Standard costs portrayed in the platform will reflect the business arrangements that you and your customers may have with Microsoft. 

We have seen some scenarios under CSP where the retail cost for the reservation purchase matches the actual cost.  We have an open ticket with Microsoft to understand why this and if it is expected under certain conditions.

Note: While we collect the reservations during the month they are purchased, the purchase fees themselves will not appear until the invoice is made available by Microsoft.

API Deprecation and Replacement (Azure Only) 

CloudCheckr has deprecated the API call “get_detailed_billing_with_grouping_v2” on Azure only.

The same data is available via “get_detailed_billing_with_grouping_by_currency” to obtain the required data.

EC2 Reserved Instance Rebalancer Report Deprecation

The EC2 Reserved Instance Rebalancer Report has been removed from CloudCheckr with Release 27.3 on June 20. This feature was no longer in use and determined to be obsolete.

Best Practice Check Deprecation

CloudCheckr has deprecated four BPCs which relate to older scenarios no longer well-contemplated in code:    

• EC2 Reserved Instance Possible Mismatch
• RDS Reserved Instance Possible Mismatch
• ElastiCache Reserved Nodes Possible Mismatch
• Redshift Reserved Instance Possible Mismatch

These need to be considered at the Consolidated Family level and CloudCheckr has a number of reports at this level available in the Payer Account, such as the EC2 RI Purchase Recommendations report. These can be accessed via Cost > Reserved Usage > Recommendations:

Free Tier

AWS has always given away free tiers, and the CloudCheckr Tier Compression feature is designed to allow MSPs to give away the free tier to each customer who might otherwise choose to work with AWS directly to receive this benefit.

AWS released changes this year that increased the time-frame in which free tier was applicable (formerly it would only last the first 12 months). Additionally, their changes implemented new thresholds of Storage, Data-Transfer & CloudFront usage that would be covered by free tier. CloudCheckr has updated free-tier calculations to accommodate these changes.

One of the common implications of free tier is that MSPs must face the choice of giving away this larger amount free to each customer, or risk losing them to a direct AWS relationship. MSPs utilizing AWS’ model are subject to their consolidated billing structure. This means that these thresholds are seen across the whole bill and are not definable on a ‘per-customer’ basis. MSPs and customers utilizing CloudCheckr’s Account Family feature are able to further segregate groupings of accounts and treat them as their own bill. The free tier changes extend to the Account Family functionality as well. Each Account Family will be treated with the new thresholds as if it were its own bill, instead of looking at the totality of the consolidated bill’s spend.

SPP Credits 

AWS provides what are called Solution Provider Program discounts. These discounts come in the form of credits from AWS, based on the program agreement that you enter into with AWS. Although the SPP program discounts cover a large array of services, some services have new branches of offerings that are not a part of the SPP authorized services list.

CloudCheckr has updated several service categories, including DynamoDB accelerator (Amazon DAX), Workspaces Application Manager (WAM), Kinesis Data Analytics & Kinesis Data Firehose to better reflect their separation from their original umbrella services (DynamoDB, Workspaces & Kinesis respectively).

Include Credits in Custom Billing Charges

You can now choose to include Savings Plans Negation credits and/or All other credits when creating an “Add a percent discount or premium for all charges” and “Add a monthly percent charge or credit” Custom Charge. The default setting is to exclude both credits

Help Bot

You are now able to access CloudCheckr’s help resources straight from the app! The Help Bot, located on the Navigation pane, allows you to browse the CloudCheckr Success Center without leaving CloudCheckr CMx, it also holds links to other resources including our Online Learning Portal and the Product Announcements and Release Notes page. In addition to those resources, there is a tab within the bot to provide feedback on your experience with CloudCheckr. 

Bug Fixes and Improvements

27.0

• Added reporting for new RDS instance types
• Resolved an issue where some Azure Reserved Instances were not reporting costs during some months
• Resolved an issue where a Best Practice check for S3 Buckets Not Enforcing Server-Side Encryption with a Bucket Policy was incorrectly reporting results
• Resolved an issue where some Saved Filters were not being updated correctly

27.1

• Resolved an issue where Cost Alerts were using the Advanced Filtering report instead of Advanced Grouping
• Resolved an issue where Azure Enterprise Agreements were incorrectly reporting the Zone rather than Region
• Resolved an issue where CMx Dashboards were unable to update when a payee changed payers within the same month
• Resolved an issue where Amazon DynamoDB Accelerator (AmazonDAX) services were not presenting costs
• Resolved an issue where Bastion and Bandwidth Meter Categories were incorrectly displaying Retail cost in Azure Enterprise Agreements
• Resolved an issue where the Forecast was not including Custom Cost Configurations
• Resolved an incorrect reporting in the “Buckets Allowing Access via HTTP” BPC

27.2

• Resolved an issue where the export for Change Monitoring contained no data
• Resolved an issue with Azure EA where Marketplace Costs were categorized incorrectly
• Resolved an issue where the Saved Filter email data does not match the data in the UI
• Resolved an issue where the chart returned in Advanced Grouping was showing incorrect max and min values when grouped hourly
• Resolved an issue with missing Dynamo DB Summary SnapBacks
• 
  

27.3

• Resolved an issue where some Azure EAs were not ingesting data
• Resolved an issue where Azure Memory Metrics were not showing in the Right Sizing Report
• Resolved an issue with the Azure Right Sizing report not displaying the current cost for a VM correctly
• Resolved an issue where the Forecast was displaying incorrect amounts
• Added support for Datadog EU region
• Resolved an issue with the grant_user api call returning an error
• Resolved an error in the Daily Advanced Grouping Saved Filter email when comparing MTD costs
• Resolved an issue that did not allow ‘ignore’ comments to be entered into Best Practice Checks
• Redirected the “Reserved EC2 Instance Not Fully Utilized” BPC to the correct reports
• Resolved an issue where remediation comments were not saving in the CIS Benchmark

27.4

• Added support for some additional one time charges for Azure CSPs, including “SendGrid” charges
• Resolved an issue with Azure Advanced Grouping where the tags were not loading in the drop down for filtering by tags
• Resolved an issue where the Azure Reservation Billing Configuration page was not saving changes
• Resolved an issue where accounts with no credentials and no billing data were sending emails
• Updated the “Idle SQL Database Instances” predicted cost to take be more accurate
• Updated the export from the Well Architected Readiness Advisor report to include the associated Best Practice Check
• Resolved an issue where some projects were not displaying the Total Compliance Report
• Resolved an issue where a payee account was not created automatically and not able to be added manually to CloudCheckr

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