New API Capabilities: Unlock and Reprocess historical billing Reports (AWS & Azure)

• Added new API calls that enable customers to get the status of, lock and unlock, and initiate reprocessing for a given month: 

  • AWS API calls

    • Get Status
    • Unlock Month
    • Reprocess Month

  • Azure API calls

    • Get Status
    • Unlock Month
    • Reprocess Month

Use Case:

Customers chose to reload/reprocess data published by a Cloud Provider in order to ensure the most up-to-date costs are represented in the CloudCheckr platform. There may also be times that custom charges need to be updated across a wide range of projects in CloudCheckr, or some other adjustment needs to be made to multiple projects. It is now possible to programmatically query to check status, lock or unlock, and initiate a reload for a given project or set of projects within CloudCheckr.  

Improvements

• New Group By options have been added to the Advanced Grouping Report to allow deeper cost analysis (AWS and Azure)

  • AWS

    • Invoice ID
    • Paying Account ID
    • Commercial vs GovCloud

  • Azure

    • Paying Account ID
• Added support for resource tag data for the AWS Elastic Container Service, which has also been added to BPCs and can be downloaded

Fixes

• Addressed a performance issue with the historic billing collector which was causing extended cost ingestion times
• Updated RDS Custom Oracle Single AZ RAC instance pricing after deprecation by AWS
• Fixed an issue where Cost Changes Report was not loading
• Enhanced descriptions in cost savings report CSV export
• BPC export of “Large Exports” may now be downloaded 
• Resolved CSV column alignment issues impacting Inventory Reports exports 
• Fixed false positive issues with Azure BPC “App Service with SSL Disabled” and AWS Automatic RDS Database Backup”
• Fixed issue with improperly tagged resources report where old rules were not being resolved 
• Addressed loading issues for EC2 RI inventory, Instance History, and History by Time reports (jobs expected to take a few days to complete) 

MSP Reseller Link / L2 Customer Fixes

• Resolved billing collector issue impacting reseller-linked projects (L2s) that prevented successful completion in certain scenarios 
• Ensured proper sharing of savings plan costs with reseller-linked projects (L2s) in specific edge cases 
• Fixed an issue where some Friendly Names were not being passed to an MSP’s L2 customer 

April 7 30.2.2 release notes

• Addressed an unexpected scenario where AWS included new EC2 instance types in the CUR file without making those instance types available via the Public AWS Pricing API (CloudCheckr relies upon the Public AWS Pricing API as part of the overall cost ingestion process) which caused some data ingestion to be incorrect 
• Addressed an issue accidentally introduced by a code refactor in v30.1.1 designed to improve performance under certain high-volume reservation purchase scenarios 

New Month-end Finalization Capabilities for AWS

• Added ability to delay billing period locking to a specified date for AWS Payer Accounts to allow customers to automatically include out-of-cycle billing charges before a month is finalized in CloudCheckr.  

The day the report is finalized - the default option

Day _ of every month - Will wait for that day to complete before locking the previous month. For example, if you choose the 10th day of every month February will lock on the 10th of March.

The last day of each month - For example, February will not lock and finalize until the last day of March. 

Use Case:

The change to the locking date will help with the case of AWS bills becoming finalized but Credits or Support Charges have not yet been applied to the account.  Usually, AWS will apply for Credits after the bill has been finalized (i.e. Invoice Number written to the CUR) which would previously require a reload on a payer account for it to be reflected correctly in CloudCheckr.  By changing when you want your lock to be performed you can ensure you are selecting a date after you normally see credits applied to your account, avoiding the need to manually reload payer accounts. 

Improvements

• Added ability to email a notification that a month's billing data has been finalized (AWS and Azure)

• Paying Account ID is visible and usable as a grouping option in Advanced Grouping so that customers can tie back the presented spend to the original owner of the overall bill with which it is associated

  • AWS Provider ID and friendly name for the payer account associated with the linked account

  • Azure, we present the ID of the CSP, EA, or MCA associated with the subscription

    • MCA or EA: the enrollment/agreement ID
    • CSPs: the GUID displayed as the provider ID for the CSPs on the list of accounts
• Inclusion of resource tag data for the Elasticsearch AWS service

Fixes

• Admin page “Manage Emails” does not save % cost alert configurations

  • Setting now saves as expected

• Improperly Tagged Resources report showing terminated instances

  • These instances which have been terminated are now removed from the Improperly Tagged Resources report

• CIS Benchmarks toggles added:

  • 4.6, 4.9, 4.12, 4.13

30.0

Improvements

• The ‘List of Kinesis Streams’ report has been improved to now include Un/Tagged Resource filter options. This increased filtering is reflected in the summary charts along with report exports, and the related BPCs.
• Simplified and improved the Cost Savings report by removing unclear recommendations.
• Improved the Azure Reservation Billing Configuration report by adding a column to display the ‘RI Expiration Date’ for Azure CSP accounts.

Fixes

• Resolved a page size on the Audit History report where users weren’t able to properly adjust the page size.

29.7

Improvements

• Now including resource tag data for AWS Task Definitions service in the List of ECS Task Definitions report.
• Now including storage and month cost data in the List of DynamoDB Tables report. 
• Advanced Grouping now includes the ability to include the Paying Account ID & friendly name as a grouping option for AWS accounts and AWS MAVs. 
• Advanced Grouping now includes the ability to group by Regulation Type for AWS accounts. This will denote whether the account is associated to Commercial or GovCloud region.
• Tag Keys are now sorted alphabetically for the following reports: List of S3 Buckets, List of DynamoDB Tables, ECS Task Definition Detail

Bugs

• Improved EC2 CloudWatch metric ingestion that was causing incomplete data under certain scenarios.
• Resolved an issue on the Spend Analysis report where the drilldown options did not work. Users should now be able to drilldown into results for this report.
• Resolved an issue with the EC2 Instance Resize automation workflows. Users can now “Fix Now” EC2 Instance sizes via the “Utilization > Right Sizing” report.

Improvements

CloudCheckr is introducing two new system roles for MSP customers to help manage their child customers.

• Audit Access Management (L2 customers) - Allows the L1 user to view users, clients, roles and permission sets on any child customers. Also allows a user to view SAML providers, all accounts, account groups, MAVs, and account attributes. No reports or editing options are available.
• Read Only Role (L2 customers) - Allows a user to view any child customers and their reports. No permission to access management or customer management data.

Improvements and Bug Fixes

29.6

Improvements 

• Azure RI Recommendations are now available for MCA & EA projects
• Added support for new AWS Region - Asia Pacific (Melbourne) - ap-southeast-4.
• Added summary charts by both tagged and untagged resources on the “ECS Task Definition Detail Report”, “List of DynamoDB Report”, and “List of S3 Report”.
• Added visibility into both tagged and untagged resources for AWS Elastic Container Services on “List of Elastic Container Service” report. CloudCheckr also added support for the ECS resource type in the “Tagged Resources” page.

Bugs

• While in CMx, BPC filtered results do not honor the filter criteria when adjusting the number of results to display on the table. This now has been resolved.
• A horizontal scroll bar was erroneously present in dropdowns in Cost Allocator when viewed in CMx. This now has been resolved. Users may need to perform a hard refresh while on the page to see the update. Windows users can use the F5 key while targeting the browser to perform the hard refresh. Mac users can hit ⌘ + Shift + R while targeting the browser to perform a hard refresh.
• Dropdown arrow icons were missing in the Tag Mapping page when viewed in CMx. This now has been resolved. Users may need to perform a hard refresh while on the page to see the update.
• The BPC “Rotation Not Enabled For Customer Created CMKs For KMS Encryption” was giving false positives for customers regarding Asymmetric and External keys, which do not qualify for automatic rotation per AWS guidelines. This now has been resolved.

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.