We listened to that feedback, and today we are thrilled to launch an interactive and updated version of the Cheat Sheet. Check it out! 

Here’s what’s new:

• Web based: It’s now a web app, so you can bookmark it, play with it, and we can keep the information up to date. The PDF we previously did was out of date as soon as AWS changed their pricing, which they do regularly.
• Region Selection and Comparison: You can select any region and see the price table change. There’s also a comparison table that shows you the percentage difference between each region.
• Currency Conversion: Select between US $, £ pounds sterling and € euro. We’ll add more as we hear what people want to see.
• Select Time Period: Costs are normally shown in hours, leaving you to figure out how many hours in a day (easy), a month (less easy – how many days do you take? How many do Amazon?!) or a year. Select the time period and we’ll show you the cost for that region, in the currency you wise, for the time you want the server.
• Spot Instance Price and History: Easily see the Spot Price right now, in the region you wish, and also see in that context of historic (since May 2012) average, high and low price.
• Reserved Instances: See the hourly reserved cost, compared to on-demand or spot, and select what type to view (1 or 3 year, light, medium or high) and decide if you’d like to amortize the upfront cost of the life of the instance, reflected in it’s hourly cost.
• Windows or Linux: View costs based on which platform you’d prefer. (We’ll add RDS if there’s demand for it – let me know in the comments)
• Compare Reserved Instances: See the payback time, and the difference in reserved instance types and regions to help you make better purchasing decisions.

The spot price is updated every few minutes, and of course we update the service pricing every time AWS do. If you wish, you can enter your email address and we’ll notify you whenever there is a major price change.

We really wanted to make this a simple place to go to price check the Cloud. Please let us know at support@cloudvertical.com or in the comments if there’s anything you’d like to see added to make this more useful.

Often what users like to see in their Cloud cost and usage report depends on their role in the organization, it’s structure, the project they are working on, and sometimes the time of the year or month. There is no way we can provide a standardized report that would perfectly fit all those needs and – at the same time – remain usable and useful.

So while we do our best to deliver a number default views and reports so they suit all of our users, we are now giving you possibility to build your own.

What are Custom Reports

Custom reports are views presenting cloud cost and usage metrics you choose. You specify data that you care about and decide how it will be processed and presented (you can choose between graphs, tables, lists, pie-charts). Finally, you can set up send-out options, so you (or anyone that you choose) will get generated reports directly in their mailbox.

This is what  your custom report might look like:

How to create Custom Report

Short version: pick the metrics you want to get in a report, decide how you want them to be grouped and choose a visualization form. Repeat until you’ve covered all the data you want to get in a report and set up email address and frequency for send-out.

Now, lets go through it step by step. Start by going to the “Reports” tab. You should see there – in “Custom Reports” view – with all the reports you’ve created. If you don’t have any, you’ll be prompted to create your first report.

Click “Build new report” to get started. Give your report a title, then click “Add section” to add first set of metrics to your report.

The first step of adding metrics to the report is to choose which ones you wish to see.. Let’s say we want to get information on EC2 cost and average instance CPU usage for specific projects we run. Pick those metrics and click “Save” to move to another step.

In the second step you choose how your metrics will be grouped. We said that we want to see EC2 cost and instance CPU usage for specific projects. Since our resources are tagged with project names, and all those project-name tags are grouped in the “Project” group of tags – we select the option  ”Tag” and set up grouping options to “Tags from a selected group” and select “Project” tag group. We see that there are 2 tags in that group. Click “Save” to move on to next step.

We now have decided that we want our new report to show EC2 Total cost and average instance usage metrics for our projects. In the previous data-manipulation step we can apply filters to the data shown in the report. Lets just set up time-range filter, so we always see data for the current month to date only.

Now, after saving the third step, some visualization options will activate to give you a preview of how the selected data will be presented in the report. You can enter title and description for the report section created based on these metrics. But what’s more important – you can now decide how the data will be presented: as a table, pie-chart, graph or a list (depending on the type and number of metrics you’ve selected not all options might be available).

We’ve decided to display the desired metrics in the form of a simple table. Click “Add” to add it to your report.

Now you can repeat this step and add as many sections to a single report as you want or create as many reports as you require.

Help us improve

What we are launching today is really a beta of  the “Custom Reports” piece. We wanted to get in front of you as quickly as we could to validate the idea and learn from you.  How  would you like us to improve it? What are the elements that work well and what variables can we add?

Contact us on support@cloudvertical.com, @cloudvertical on Twitter or in comments below. We’re really excited to see what type of reports you build, and do let us know what additional variables and combinations we can enable for you!

Since then we’ve learned that most of our users already had their tags set up as they wanted directly on AWS and they just needed them to synchronize properly with key-value relation support. Having learned that, with our latest tagging feature release we made it possible to use AWS Tag Key as a Tag Group in CloudVertical and tag values as tags in a group. Both of them are available for filtering data in all CloudVertical views.

You can see all your tags at the tags tab

The dots next to tags and groups show whether tag or group of tags can be used to filter data using in-view tag filters. Green – means you can use this tag to filter the data. Gray – means that this tag is not important and you won’t use it for filtering data. This is to prevent different auto-generated tags pollute your filters. Just click the dot, to change tags status.

How do I use tags in CloudVertical?

You can use tags in two ways.

First: you can use them to filter the data displayed in CloudVertical views whenever you see ‘Tag filters’ option active. This way in eg. Services / EC2 tab you are able to see EC2 cost and usage by project or client.

Second: you can create your own custom views and reports displaying only data for selected tags, groups of tags and comparing them.

How do I manage my tags in CloudVertical?

You don’t. CloudVertical doesn’t manage your tags(at the moment) – we just synchronize your egzisting AWS tags. If you want to re-assign your tags, delete them or create new: just do it on AWS and we will automatically update your tags in CV.

One more thing please make sure your IAM credentials are able to read tags for RDS and S3 you can find out IAM policy here.

There are links to some resources within the deck, but here they are again for simplicity, if you would like to read more about the topic:

• AWS Economics Centre : http://aws.amazon.com/economics/
• Cloudonomics Book: http://www.amazon.com/Cloudonomics-Website-Business-Value-Computing/dp/1118229967
• Microsoft Cloud Economics: http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/news/presskits/cloud/docs/the-economics-of-the-cloud.pdf
• AWS Costs Cheat Sheet: https://blog.cloudvertical.com/2012/10/aws-cost-cheat-sheet-2/
• On-Premise vs. Cloud Cost Model: http://andrewmcafee.org/2012/10/mcafee-cloud-costs-google-model
• Data Gravity: http://datagravity.org/

I get asked about Amazon Web Services pricing literally every day. I suppose it’s a factor of the job I’m in! The AWS Simple Calculator should come with a health warning for anyone who is not already an AWS expert, and the EC2 Pricing page is a resource I personally go to a lot, but it’s not a quick reference. We do a good job in CloudVertical (signup for a free trial) of helping Cloud users understand their costs but in terms of just putting together basic, high-level indicative costs for a solution – there isn’t really a simple ‘at a glance’ solution. We do TCO (total cost of ownership) models for customers all the time, and we may launch a public, automated ‘shopping cart style’ TCO and Cloud On-Ramp Calculator in the near future (hint!), but in the mean time, here’s a cheat sheet (PDF) I put together to help with basic, quick, cursory AWS pricing.

A few of the questions it aims to answer at-a-glance:

• How much is storage?
• How much does an instance cost for a month?
• What instance has about 7GB of RAM?
• What’s the difference in cost between regions?
• How much is data transfer?
• How many hours are in a month? How many in a year?
• What percentage saving could I get if I bought reserved instances?

As you can see in the screenshot, we’ve made adding a user very straightforward. Just enter the email address and we’ll do the rest! That user will have access to all the information your account creates – but will not be able to edit or view any accesss details. We will introduce more granular administrator controls as we get user feedback – so feel free to suggest how we can improve this and let us know any organization specific requirements you have.  You can remove a user any time with just 1-click.

One of the main use cases we hear all the time for sub-accounts is not actually for users to log-in. We know people don’t want more applications to manage – and unless there is an exercise or scenario to be modeled – the normal team user really just wants to ‘fire and forget’. – getting regular reports and alerts on their Cloud costs and usage. These are often called ‘showback reports‘ and can really help get control over ‘who’s doing what, with what resources, are they being utilised, and how much does it cost‘. So – focusing on simplicity – if you don’t wish to create accounts for certain users – you can just create the report you would like them to see (by service, timeframe, and tagged to include only the resource cost and usage applicable to them), set the time frame you want it sent, and enter their email address.

We hope this helps large organizations that require different levels of access for different departments – and also those who wish to also consolidate multiple Cloud accounts into one view as well. Now you can view your data from as many provider accounts as you wish, and create granular reporting and access to sub-sets of that data for many users.

Over the last few months we noticed that there is something on the AWS statement at the start of the month: the support recurring charge is shown twice – for example – once for November and one for December.

While we’d seen this before, we started asking is it something we don’t understand, is it an AWS feature … so I’ve  tweeted about it and got an email response from an AWS representative with an explanation. (We’ve been given permission to post this).

AWS charges the prorated AWS Support monthly fee at signup and on the 1st of each month thereafter. When viewing your Account Activity for the current month, you will see the charges which will come due on the first day of the next month. This includes the next month’s recurring Support charge. However, this charge is not processed until the first day of the next month. For example, this explains why you already see the October Support charge on your estimated billing for the September billing period.

When viewing your Account Activity page for a previous month, you should only see the Support charge for that month (due on the first of the month).

I appreciate this process may be confusing and we are always looking into ways we can improve the customer experience.

So – be assured – you won’t be charged twice, and we’ve noticed that the additional line actually disappears around the 5th of each month too.

The CloudVertical app is built on top of this API – so it’s extremely powerful and detailed – and we’re ‘eating our own dogfood’. We’re really excited to see what mashups and new tools get built with this!

The API allows you to access resources via JSON requests over HTTP, using GET verb. The data is returned in JSON. A list of all the available requests are on the API Documentation.

Getting Started 

All of the API requests are authenticated via an existing user account – so if you don’t have one – signup now! Every request must include your API key, which you can find in Settings –> Account Details tab.

The API key allows us to authenticate your calls and give an access to your resources – so keep it safe! You can of course regenerate it anytime in Settings –>Account Details tab. In order to maintain security always use SSL by beginning the requests with ‘https’.

API URL starts with

https://resource.cloudvertical.com/

Mostly in every call you should be using time range parameters

from: Time in UTC 
to: Time in UTC

Common Use Examples

1. Month to date cost with cost projection by end of month
2. EC2 cost for certain time frame and tags
3. S3 buckets with cost

Month to date cost with cost projection by end of month

API_URL/v01/statements/overview/cost_summary?api_key=uqisoauiiqo&from=2012-09-01&to=2012-09-27

optionally if you have few cloud connections you can add parameter cloud_connection_id to the request so the data returned by API would be just narrowed to that cloud connection.

API_URL/v01/statements/overview/cost_summary?api_key=uqisoauiiqo&from=2012-09-01&to=2012-09-27&cloud_connection_id=78819

Response from server would look like something like this:

{
    "cue": {
        "previous":"0.2:1",
        "current": "0.0:1"
    },
    "total_cost": {
        "previous": 1755.6899999999991,
        "current": 2817.2300000000027
    },
    "avg_daily_cost": {
        "previous": 65.02555555555553,
        "current": 104.34185185185196
    },
    "end_of_month_estimated_cost": {
        "previous": 1817.5599999999993,
        "current": 3181.65743545413
    },
    "reservations_amortised": {
        "previous": 0,
        "current": 1.016883666666649
    }
}

let me explain what data you get:

cue: is a Cloud Usage Efficiency metric introduced by us which tells you how are you doing in terms of usage/spend efficiency
total_cost: your total cost for current time-range and the previous analogical period
avg_daily_cost: your avg daily spent in selected time frame and for the previous period
end_of_month_estimated_cost: it’s cost projected by end of month for current month and the total spent from last month,
reservations_amortised: if you purchased the ReservedInstances we would show you what’s the amortization cost for selected timeframe and the previous period.

That call works if you’ve provided either full AWS console access or IAM billing access or programmatic billing.

If you have not – not a problem we have something for you as well, the cost summary calculated by us based on data pulled from the AWS API (it would be slightly different that AWS statement especially if you have consolidated billing and you’ve provided only API Keys for one of them)

/v01/usages/overview/cost_summary?api_key=V93xAJGz3QywAbnJucaZ&from=2012-09-01&to=2012-09-27

and the response looks the same as for statement cost

{
    "cue": {
        "previous": 5.0:1,
        "current": "4.9:1"
    },
    "total_cost": {
        "previous": 1326.16,
        "current": 1281.9399999999998
    },
    "avg_daily_cost": {
        "previous": 47.362857142857145,
        "current": 45.78357142857142
    },
    "end_of_month_estimated_cost": {
        "previous": 1475.69,
        "current": 1373.5071428571428
    },
    "reservations_amortised": {
        "previous": 0,
        "current": 2.5292124337899367
    }
}

the difference is that you can filter the data by tags by passing parameter with_tags if you want to narrow down result to resources tagged by tags or without_tags when you want to exclude resources tagged by certain tag

and the request would look like this

/v01/usages/overview/cost_summary?api_key=V93xAJGz3QywAbnJucaZ&from=2012-09-01&to=2012-09-27&with_tags[]=cloudvertical&with_tags[]=db&without_tags[]=replication

EC2 cost for certain time frame and tags

If you want to just get the EC2 cost for certain time frame and tags here is the request which would give you that and a bit more:

/v01/computes/overview/ec2?api_key=V93xAJGz3QywAbnJucaZ&from=2012-09-01&to=2012-09-27&

and the response looks like this

{
    "summary": {
      "avg_instances": {
            "previous": 5.03,
            "current": 5.74
        },
        "avg_ecus": {
            "previous": 17.92,
            "current": 20.95
        },
        "avg_ram": {
            "previous": 37.9,
            "current": 43.05
        }
    },
    "details": {
        "total_cost": {
            "previous": 897.5,
            "current": 994.27
        },
        "ebs_total_cost": {
            "previous": 114.67,
            "current": 88.23
        },
        "avg_utilisation": {
            "previous": 23.19,
            "current": 19.04
        },
        "ram_hours_used": {
            "previous": 22738.14,
            "current": 25828.81
        },
        "ecu_hours_used": {
            "previous": 10751.31,
            "current": 12568.2
        }
    }
}

Data is returned for the current timeframe and so you can compare for the previous period, we return two section summary and details at the summary section we return attributes
avg_instances: it’s amount of average running instances
avg_ecus: it’s average amount of ECU deployed
avg_ram: it’s average amount of RAM deployed
avg_utilisation: the average CPU utilisation

at the details section:
total_cost: EC2 instances total cost
ebs_total_cost: EBS volumes total cost
ram_hours_used: the amount of 1GB RAM /hour used
ecu_hours_used: the amount of 1ECU / hour used

S3 buckets with cost

If you’ve provided IAM billing credentials or AWS console access we would be able to present you cost for each bucket for certain time range.

request

/v01.1/storage/list/s3_bucket?&from=2012-09-01&to=2012-10-02&forecast=true&per_page=100&page=1

and the response would look like this

{
    "current_page": 1,
    "per_page": 100,
    "total_entries": 69,
    "entries": [{
        "cloud_connection_id": 13217,
        "provider": "Amazon",
        "reference_id": "bucket",
        "region": "US",
        "forecast": {
            "standard_cost": 0,
            "reduced_cost": 0,
            "total_cost": 0.002872,
            "standard_previous_cost": 0,
            "reduced_previous_cost": 0,
            "total_previous_cost": 0.007438
        },
        "standard_cost": 0,
        "standard_last_month_cost": 0,
        "reduced_cost": 0,
        "reduced_last_month_cost": 0,
        "total_cost": 0.002872,
        "total_last_month_cost": 0
    }]
}

the response is mostly self explanatory, prefixes standard,reduced are corresponding to the S3 storage option.

We’re really excited to see what gets built on top of this. Let us know in the comments! If you have any questions around the CloudVertical API, please feel free to contact us at support@cloudvertical.com.

Of course the most common metric sought is a comparison of EC2 total and On-Demand, to Reserved Instances (amortized over the purchase period) over time, so that you can visualize your EC2 bill as it reduces in line with increased use of Reserved Instances. If all this sounds like a familiar pain – keep reading and take a look at the screenshots below. If it doesn’t and you’re a heavy AWS user – please let us help you! Using Reserved Instances can save you huge sums off your monthly bill – anything from 30% to 70% !!

For starters, lets say you’d like to know how much was spent in each Availability Zone and what portion of that is using Reserved Instances. (This is a good measure of effective buying – for base or static minimum loads)

You can also view by instance type – by cost (as below) or by hours used (total hours is a good capacity metric). At CloudVertical we are trying to give you as many tools to analyze the underlying data as possible, because we know everyone likes to view their metrics; make their purchasing decisions; or create their management report – in a slightly different way. I should also point out that you can, as always, create subsets of these views by tag and by time so you can analyze how effective you are now versus last month.

We’ve been asked a ton of times to provide to ability to break down information about average instances running by lifecycle – Spot , On Demand, or Reserved with discount by instance type. So here it is:

Aside from visualizing usage in many ways, which is great way to get a snapshot of how you are using Reserved Instances, it’s also useful to be able to dig deeper and understand at a granular level what has been purchased, where, and what the usage is – so that you can adjust accordingly, and work out an effective purchasing strategy – by instance type, reservation type, and critically – location (as we’ve seen many times that users don’t track this and reservations go unused).
That’s why we are giving you a list with all reservation details. It’s a breakdown of all your purchases by: availability zone, instance type, amount of purchased instances, when next RI is expiring, what the % usage of Reserved vs OnDemand instances is, and what the usage is compared to your total usage -> based on that you can decide if you should buy more reserved instances; and what the amortized cost calculated / usage total cost and savings for selected period are. When you roll over you can see more details -> type of the RI offering (light/medium/high), term, and fixed price.

Let us know what you think in the comments. Want us to provide a specific visualization for you – no problem – we’d really like to hear your individual use cases. Reserved Instances are such an important part of Cloud Cost Management and we know there is a lot more that can be done here. Help us help you!

Not a CloudVertical user? – signup now for a FREE trial.

CloudVertical now supports IAM, so you can use it to give us read-only access to your services. It’s really easy to setup:

1. Log into you AWS account: https://aws-portal.amazon.com/gp/aws/manageYourAccount

2.  Scroll down to the “IAM user access to the AWS Website” section.  Check both checkboxes on the right (“Account Activity” and “Usage Reports”). Click Activate Now button below checkboxes (do it even if the checkboxes were already checked!).

3. Go to IAM tab of the AWS Console: https://console.aws.amazon.com/iam/home  and click “Create a New Group of Users” button to create a new IAM group. You can name it “CloudVertical”, so it’ll be obvious what is it for.

4. In the next step, choose “Custom Policy” option and click “Select”.

Give the new policy CloudVertical name and paste following code in “Policy Document” text area:

5. In the next step (“Users”), create new user named CloudVertical. Make sure “Generate an access key for each user” is selected (if you don’t have any access keys generated yet, that you’d like to use) and hit “Continue”.

6. Review your data and click “Finish” if it’s correct. You should see a confirmation box like the one below:

7. Close the window and go to “Users” tab (look for a link in the menu on the left hand side). Select CloudVertical user and click “Manage Password” option below to generate new password for that user.

8. At this point – you have access keys, account number ID (find it on IAM dashboard, check image below), login and password for use with CloudVertical.

You can read more on IAM in Amazon Documentation:

http://docs.amazonwebservices.com/IAM/latest/UserGuide/IAMGettingStarted.html