New Notification Capabilities: New Cloud Accounts Added to the Bill

Use Case: Customers do not always know when a net-new account has been added to their bill. 
MSPs will want to update reseller links, and enterprise customers want to ensure their new accounts are in the correct families for capabilities such as unsharing logic.

Customers can now configure an email notification to be sent when a new account has been detected on their AWS or Azure bill

• Emails can be configured at the “L1” as well as the “L2” if you are using that construct 
• Alert will indicate the originating paying entity (AWS payer, Azure CSP, Azure EA, etc) by both the project name and the provider ID

Improvements

• Added pricing tier support for SQS.
• Add a button to delete Active AWS Credentials - used for when a project no longer needs to collect data however the historic data needs to be retained (i.e. an L2 customer switches L1 provider, and historic data is needed even though new data ingestion is not needed)  

Bug Fixes

• Clarified that for the IAM Password BPC that per AWS the password policy must have been customized by the end user on AWS in order to accurately check
• Fixed RDS Cost Detail summary where Instance Data Transfer Out Cost was displaying incorrectly when choosing list cost.
• Improved accuracy of the Azure Perimeter Assessment feature which omitted certain findings when the ‘Filter out any Location with no publicly accessible resources or VPCs’ option was selected.
• Fixed an issue where Advanced Grouping and Daily Summary would display the incorrect EC2 Instance Size. 
• Fixed an issue with API GetDetailedBillingFile 
• Resolved an issue where an Azure MCA was unable to re-credential

MSP Reseller Link / L2 Customer Improvements

• Added ability for MSPs to support list cost in Cost Summary emails 
• L2 Notification Capabilities: New Cloud Accounts Added to the Bill (see above) 

• List Cost can now be sent in email notifications, at the MSP or Distributor’s discretion (access via Email Settings, or Manage Emails): 

  • Summary of Daily Bill
  • Summary of Monthly Bill
  • Daily Consolidated Billing Summary
  • Monthly Consolidated Billing Summary

31.1 Release notes

Improvements

• Azure Custom Usage Rates can now be configured with “Start” and “End” Dates to permit customers to control when these rates are applied.

Bug Fixes

• Addressed an issue where the List of S3 Buckets Estimated Cost (Inventory report) was incorrect
• Added additional controls to the PCI DSS Compliance

31.2 Release notes

Savings Plan Amortization Now Available in Configure Custom Cost

• Amortize upfront costs by proportional payee hourly usage

  • Amortization is added as an incremental charge for every hour an instance is used that matches an RI. When using Blended cost, amortization is spread across all hours for a matching instance regardless of OnDemand or RI utilization. When using Unblended cost, amortization is spread across all hours utilizing the reservation.

• Simple monthly amortization

  • Amortization is added as a single charge per RI type at the end of the month

• On-demand amortization cap

  • Amortization is added to each usage row up until the on-demand cost of the running instance. Any remaining amortization is charged back to the account that purchased the reserved instance.

Improvements

• AWS and Azure advanced grouping items, as well as report filters and dropdowns, are now sorted alphanumerically

• AWS Custom Charge API has been enhanced with new parameter support, and now includes:

  • add_custom_billing_charge_percent_all_charges_v3

    • Admin API Reference Guide 

  • edit_custom_billing_charge_percent_all_charges_v3

    • Admin API Reference Guide 

  • add_custom_billing_charge_monthly_percent_v3

    • Admin API Reference Guide 

  • edit_custom_billing_charge_monthly_percent_v3

    • Admin API Reference Guide 
• Added Pricing Tier Support for AWS EBS Service 
• Introduced a toggle in the email settings page of a MAV account that enables the user to view list cost type summary emails instead of unblended which was set by default 

Bug Fixes

• Resolved an issue where custom images/logos were not rendering properly for exported reports
• Fixed an issue where Admins and Partner SysAdmins were unable to access the Retired RDS Reserved DB Instances report 

Audit history search has been expanded and may now be downloaded as a CSV 

• AWS Custom Usage Rates can now be configured with “Start” and “End” Dates to permit customers to control when these rates are applied.
• Added Pricing Tier Support for AWS API Gateway Service.
• Download functionality has been added for the Auto Scaling Groups report.

Bug Fixes

• Resolved an issue where some accounts were not generating invoices.
• Resolved an issue where the ‘Unused Elastic Load Balancers’ Best Practice Check was reporting false positives, prompting invalid Cost savings opportunities in the Cost Savings report.
• Resolved an issue where some L2 customers were unable to Group By tag keys in the Advanced Grouping report.
• Resolved an issue where the Azure Reserved Instance Recommendation report was not available to some customers.
• Updated the columns listed in the CSV export from List of Elastic Container Service to match the columns displayed in the UI.
• Resolved an issue where new payer accounts were being classified as unknown.
• Resolved an issue where the custom logo was missing from invoices.

Improvements

Billing Report Change Notification

We now alert you in the event of a new billing file after the month has closed at the Payer (AWS) or Agreement (Azure, EA/MCA/CSP) level available for possible ingestion / reload.  When we detect a more current file for AWS or Azure we will alert you in the bell notification area so that you can take any desired actions such as reload to include OOCB (Out of Cycle Billing Charges) such as Support. 

Bug Fixes

• Resolved an issue where loading View Resources on a Tag Value would fail  
• Resolved an issue where Friendly Names in Single Month Billing Summary export were incorrect
• Resolved an issue where the use of Azure tag mapping containing the “Paying Account” parameter would cause billing ingestion to fail.
• Resolved an issue where the unlock/reload button was missing

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.