NEW: Cost BI – Data Analysis Tool

We’ve added a new capability called Cost BI (Business Intelligence) to surface more granular detail regarding cost and usage within your cloud bill. In CMx, find Cost BI under the Cost menu.

With Cost BI, we have introduced a more robust solution to analyzing cost data. With this tool, users have more granular visibility on items (Accounts, Services, Descriptions, etc.) that can appear without needing to sort by a group by. Make changes in real time, move things around fluidly and dynamically, and see updates in real time. Users have the ability to load a dashboard and then drill into and analyze the details. 

Users can see multiple cost types side-by-side (IF user has access to multiple cost types), and quickly drill into your costs and the services that are generating them.  

NOTE: File Exports (csv format) are streamlined, omitting null data. Each item is now filled with relevant data in the Group-By, avoiding white space and simplifying downstream analysis you might conduct in Excel or other BI tools. 

Support Desk Update

CloudCheckr Technical Support is now using Zendesk as the primary ticket management system, helping us provide an improved support experience while also streamlining support across the Spot product portfolio, including Spot Security and the upcoming Billing Engine and Cost Intelligence products. 

Continue to contact our technical support team as usual:

1. Click on Contact Support from the Success Center
2. Send an email to support@cloudcheckr.com
3. Call our support directly at +1 (585) 397-3200, Monday – Friday, 8 AM to 9 PM Eastern Time
   (NOTE: this is a new phone number as of Jan 1st, 2024)

For those tickets created on January 22nd and beyond, CloudCheckr Technical Support responses will come from support@cloudcheckrspot.zendesk.com. Please be sure to add this email to your approved senders list.  All technical support tickets opened prior to January 22 will continue to be updated and managed in our legacy ticketing system (Jira Service Desk). 

Please send a message to support@cloudcheckr.com if you have any questions or feedback.

Improvements

• We have added the Transaction Type filter to the Custom Usage Rates report, allowing users to add boundaries based on transaction type that will impact certain rates. 
• We improved the EC2 cost summary report where we now show total unused reserved cost and unused reserve instance count that reflects more accurately the RI usage overview in an account.

Bug Fixes

• Addressed an issue with Azure cost ingestion being prevented, if on the previous run no new cost data was available. 
• Resolved an issue where the Azure Cost (Percent) alert did not display any tag keys when Filter By: Lookup tags is selected. 
• Addressed a scenario where customers could not create a new dashboard pane for Cost Monthly Summary type that included Azure Payees. 
• When using List Cost Analysis, we restored presenting the L2 RI unused hours line item. 

Support Desk Update

CloudCheckr Technical Support will begin using Zendesk as the primary ticket management system on January 22nd, 2024. The adoption of Zendesk will help us provide an improved technical support experience while also streamlining support across the Spot product portfolio, including Spot Security and the upcoming Billing Engine and Cost Intelligence products. 

All technical support tickets that were opened prior to January 22nd will continue to be updated and managed in our legacy ticketing system (Jira Service Desk). All new tickets created on or after January 22nd will be opened and managed in Zendesk. All users will continue to contact our technical support team as usual:

1. Click on Contact Support from the Success Center
2. Send an email to support@cloudcheckr.com
3. Call our support directly at +1 (585) 397-3200, Monday – Friday, 8 AM to 9 PM Eastern Time
   (NOTE: this is a new phone number as of Jan 1st, 2024)

For those tickets created on January 22nd and beyond, CloudCheckr Technical Support responses will come from support@cloudcheckrspot.zendesk.com. Please be sure to add this email to your approved senders list.

Please send a message to support@cloudcheckr.com if you have any questions or feedback.

Improvements

• Improved performance on both Billing Collector and Historic Collector cost ingestion jobs.

Bug Fixes

• Resolved an issue where the List of Reserved Instances (RI) report reported incorrect values in Total Instances Unused.
• Addressed an issue where Monthly Summary would sometimes redirect to account families page.

Support phone number change!

585-397-3200
The previous number will not work after December 31, 2023; please update your records accordingly. 

NEW: Copy CUR Functionality  

We’ve added a new ability to copy billing data from CloudCheckr to an S3 bucket in CUR format, in addition to the legacy DBR format. 

This report allows you to create a copy of the payer CUR, or subset of charges from your AWS Bill for a specific Payee including any adjustments specified in CloudCheckr, and copy that file into a selected S3 bucket.

The application will generate a new file based on the CloudCheckr Custom Cost (List) every time it ingests new data from the Payer’s AWS Bill of a given Billing Period, and copy that file into your selected S3 bucket.

To use Copy CUR, navigate to the Billing > Files > Copy Billing Data

The grid lists each of the Payees for the selected consolidated billing family. If you would like to publish the charges for a selected payee:

• Select a payee from the list
• Select a file format option
• Specify the S3 Bucket where you want the file to be copied
• Attach a bucket policy to your AWS credentials that allows you to read and write to the selected S3 Bucket

Improvements

• We’ve restored the legacy “Exclude Credits” checkbox in Advanced Grouping, now called “Exclude Charges less than $0” as this was the actual behavior. This legacy checkbox implies that Tax Refunds, reported by AWS as a negative value, are withheld from customers if the legacy “Exclude Credits” checkbox is selected.    

• Monthly Advanced Grouping Saved Filter emails can now be configured to be sent on a particular date of the month, and also to only be sent after a month finalizes, if desired. Navigate to Account Configuration at the top right of the screen and select Email Settings.

  

  
  

• This allows you to ensure that all Advanced Grouping Saved Filters that are configured to have an email report sent monthly will wait until a specific date or wait until the bill has been finalized if you have configured this to be a date after AWS might close their billing. If this is not configured you should expect to see saved filters emailed on the first of the month.
  
  

Bug Fixes

• Resolved an issue in Advanced Grouping where Tagged costs appear were being written to ‘none’ 
• Fixed an issue where CSV exports in cases where <$0.01 charges are being excluded from the CSV export were not matching the UI
• Resolved an edge case related to job timing where L2s were not reloading automatically after the L1 reloaded successfully
• Resolved an edge case where Azure billing ingestion was intermittently unsuccessful
• Savings Plan Analytics historical data is now populating correctly

Support phone number change!

585-397-3200

The previous number will not work after December 31, 2023; please update your records accordingly. 

NEW: Transaction Type Filter

We’ve added a new filter called Transaction Type to advanced grouping that will surface more granular detail to better understand AWS Savings Plan and RI purchases and how they have been applied to the account. 

Using the Transaction Type filter, you will also be able to see savings plan negation rows separate from other credits or program (EDP, SPP, etc.) discounts. 

Note: Any billing data finalized prior to November 2023 will require a reload to make Transaction Type data available for filtering. The transaction types include: 

• BundledDiscount
• EdpDiscount
• Credit
• DiscountedUsage
• Fee
• Refund
• RIFee
• SavingsPlanCoveredUsage
• SavingsPlanNegation
• SavingsPlanRecurringFee
• SavingsPlanUpfrontFee
• Tax
• Usage

Please Note: Line item details - Data exports will detail each line item in detail. 

The Transaction Type filter replaces the previous “Exclude Credits” checkbox excluding both Savings Plan Negations and other credits, without an easy way to filter them separately.  

If you currently have any saved reports that utilized the “Exclude Credits” option, you will see that the Transaction Type filter is now automatically applied to mirror the effect that “Exclude Credits” had provided by not omitting Credit, EdpDiscount, Refund, or SavingsPlanNegations on the report.  

For Saved Filter use cases, existing Saved Filters will continue to work as intended. Any customer who has a Saved Filter using the Exclude Credit checkbox will have the Saved Filter converted to select the correct Transaction Types included in the Exclude Credits checkbox, as shown above. If you change the billing filter, backward compatibility is maintained. 

NEW: Savings Plan Unsharing for AWS

CloudCheckr customers may wish to retain the benefit of Savings Plans rather than share those benefits with their end customer. AWS writes actual consumption to the CUR file, which is ingested into CloudCheckr. When CloudCheckr customers prepare end-customer pricing for invoicing or showback/chargeback, they can configure Custom Costs and determine how the Savings Plan benefit should be allocated, as shown in the below screen capture. 

Savings Plan Unsharing is configured via Billing > Configure > Configure Custom Cost > Cost Allocation | Savings Plan Cost Allocation, and provides the capability to 'unshare' and remove the Savings Plan benefit from the consuming accounts that are not the purchaser of the savings plan, or within the account family of the purchaser. 

Savings Plan Unsharing is provided in addition to the existing two options (Use what is in the CUR, and Savings Plan Deallocation), and may be configured either for all AWS accounts or for selected Account Families. 

Unshare SPs for all AWS Accounts
Savings Plan Discounts (negations) line items are removed from the consuming accounts that are not the purchaser of the savings plan, or within the account family of the purchaser.

Unshare SPs for selected Account Families
Savings Plan Discounts (negations) line items for the selected account families are removed from the consuming accounts that are not the purchaser of the savings plan, or within the account family of the purchaser.

CloudCheckr’s Savings Plan Unsharing mimics AWS' deactivate Savings Plans discount sharing, allowing CloudCheckr customers to easily and reliably define how they wish to manage Savings Plan benefits.   

Savings Plan Unsharing may be used in combination with (or separately from) CloudCheckr’s RI Unsharing capability in use by many customers. 

Bug Fixes

• Resolved an issue where AwsWellArchitectedInvalidPermissions was displaying incorrectly when utilizing CloudCheckr’s WARA (Well-Architected Readiness Advisor).
• Addressed an issue where the Delete Azure Saved Filter API call was failing.
• Fixed an issue where changing currency in a scheduled invoice generator would force rounding to the second digit. 
• Resolved an edge case column header alignment issue in an advanced grouping csv export related to marketplace charges.
• Fixed an issue where when the L1 locked and the L2 didn’t automatically reprocess. 

Azure Subscription Family API

We have added new functionality to allow the creation, modification, and deletion of Azure Subscription Families APIs – see below for specifics regarding each API call: 

• Create: API Reference Guide 
• Modify: API Reference Guide 
• Delete: API Reference Guide 

Bug Fixes

• Addressed an issue where the payer closes a month as expected, and the payee was not being notified
• Addressed an issue where the high precision cost export was not being respected in some CSV exports
• Fixed an issue where – in certain scenarios – if autoscaling were used, the EC2 instance report was omitting some EC2 instances that should have been included 
• Resolved an edge case where the untagged resource report was incorrectly flagging a resource that had been tagged properly  
• Resolved an issue where tag values wouldn’t be visible in a MAV dashboard pane if multiple payers were selected
• Fixed an edge case where L2s were not receiving friendly names correctly

Improvements

• Amazon Aurora I/O-Optimized storage RDS instances are now supported 

• Added provider name (friendly name/alias) to the CMx Account List

  • Friendly Names of an account are now visible from the account manager view and can be sorted for convenience

• Improved the API get_detailed_billing_dynamic by adding new “order by” fields 

  • "order_by":{ "field":<field to order>, "direction":<direction> }

  • "direction":<direction>

    • asc
    • desc

Bug Fixes

• Resolved an issue preventing dashboards from loading properly
• Addressed an issue where cost alerts would not trigger based on whole month’s data, in certain edge cases when configured using saved advanced grouping filters
• Resolved issue where list cost analysis would fail to export when the dataset was extremely large 

Improvements

• New High Precision option includes 10 decimal place accuracy to the Advanced Grouping Export CSV in the UI and API

• The high_precision_costs_csv parameter has been introduced to the following API endpoints: 

  • get_detailed_billing_with_grouping_v2 - API already returns costs with 10 decimals in the response, however, this parameter is still required to allow customers to opt for high precision when they choose to receive the data (as CSV) through email, as this will schedule a large export job in the background.
  • schedule_report_email_advanced_grouping

Bug Fixes

• Addressed a performance issue causing slower-than-usual billing ingestion
• Solved an issue preventing dashboard data from refreshing
• Fixed an issue impacting certain L2 Pseudopayer reseller links preventing data ingestion
• Solved an issue where the List of VMs inventory report was not returning VMs marked as degraded, resulting in missing VM Inventory snapbacks 

October 23rd, 2023 - Release Notes 32.4.1

Bug Fixes

• Addressed an inconsistently appearing performance issue that could cause a user to encounter slower performance or an application timeout
• Resolved an issue where Advanced Grouping was not displaying values in the Filter section under certain edge conditions. 

October 16th, 2023 - Release Notes 32.4

Bug Fixes

• Fixed an issue where Manual Snapshots were incorrectly not appearing on the RDS Snapshots report  
• Clarified via new in-app message text that AWS Support Case Summary Report requires AWS Premium Support to populate 
• Addressed an issue where API get_resources_ec2_details_v4 was not returning correct results when using the resource_tags parameter
• Resolved an issue where “Assign credit type to the owner” was not being respected, when unassigning the existing Owner-assigned credits and assigning them back again to the owner on the [Assign Credits] page
• Fixed an infrequent issue where updated credentials via API were not being reflected correctly in the UI although the credentials were in fact updated
• Addressed an intermittent edge case where very small costs in dashboards would be displayed as scientific notation instead of an actual monetary value

October 2nd, 2023 - Release Notes 32.3

Improvements

• Monthly Summary report has been updated to include a Summary section that indicates the Month-to-Date Net Bill (total cost of the selected cost type, inclusive of credits); note that Savings Plan Negations are not true credits, and are not included as part of the credits in this report  

Bug Fixes

• Addressed an issue where List Cost Analysis would not expand Savings Plan Allocation rows when there were MANY rows  

• Fixed an issue where the RDS Detail Report for GP3 Volumes provided an incorrect Estimated Monthly Cost of PIOPS – cost now correctly reflects the receiving of free 3000 PIOPS as per AWS pricing guide

Release Notes 32.1

New Postgres SQL Inventory and Summary Reports  

We are now ingesting PostgreSQL data from the Azure PostgreSQL API to enable Inventory and Summary reports for projects and MAVs. Reports may be exported to CSV or PDF. 

Other Improvements

• Marketplace taxes are now listed within Tax Services rather than under Marketplace items 

Bug Fixes

• Fixed bug causing some AWS BPCs to not expand when selected
• Resolved an issue where, under certain conditions, large exports would fail to send daily advanced grouping email 
• Improved logic for Cost Alerts edge-case scenario where alerts could be sent without relevant data
• Resolved an issue where AWS cost ingestion was failing as a result of internal platform changes being implemented to improve performance  

Release Notes 32.2

Improved AWS Credit Summary Report  

AWS Savings Plan Negations may now be filtered separately from other AWS Credits, allowing customers to quickly identify and manage the different credit types 

Other Improvements

• Saved Filter format improvements now allow customers to pass through the filter name as the filename, simplifying the management of Scheduled Invoices 

Bug Fixes

• Resolved an issue where AWS cost ingestion was failing as a result of an incorrect update to code 
• “RDS DB Instance Maintenance Events Scheduled” Best Practice Check now correctly supports all maintenance types
• Resolved an intermittent issue with downloading Inventory Reports using the Safari browser

MSP Reseller Link / L2 Customer Improvements

Partner Plan settings are now available in the CMx UI; customers using the L1/L2 construct may now manage their customers using this new page 

Other MSP/Reseller Link / L2 Customer Bug Fixes

• Addressed an issue where the Single Month Billing Summary report incorrectly reported the Cost for Highest Service when using the cost type of List Cost
• Resolved an issue related to List Cost usage where unused RI hours were incorrectly not being recalculated for August on a no upfront RI when Reserved Instance Unsharing was enabled 
• Addressed an issue where L2 Pseudo-payer AWS invoices were not being sent when the billing period was finalized

New Tag Mapping API for AWS and Azure

Use Case: Customers wish to manage (get, create, and delete) their Tag Mappings via API call to streamline and improve efficiency, to include a JSON backup of current configurations. 

We have implemented new API calls supporting AWS and Azure tag mapping management, as follows:  

• A GET call to retrieve all the existing mappings and their associated configurations. (Azure and AWS)

  • API Reference Guide 

• A GET call to retrieve specific existing mappings and their associated configurations. (Azure and AWS)

  • API Reference Guide 

• A POST call to delete existing mappings. (Azure and AWS)

  • API Reference Guide 

• A POST call to add a tag mapping. (Azure)

  • API Reference Guide 

New Tag Mapping Search Function

We have implemented a new Tag Mapping Search Function as follows:  

Other Improvements

• Added ability for admins to manually provide Activation links from CMx
• Improved performance of Reservation collection to speed billing data into the platform. 

Bug Fix

• Fix a database issue that was causing performance issues under specific conditions.
• Fixed an issue in the MAV EC2 RI Inventory report that was showing a negative number for the Total Instances Unused 
• Addressed an issue where the L2 notifications were incorrectly reporting “month not finalized” even with the L1 finalized and L2 finalized.