Make Sense of Your Cloud Data
Over a decade ago, VMware Aria Cost powered by CloudHealth (formerly CloudHealth) was created to help organizations make sense of their cloud cost and usage data. Since then, we’ve helped tens of thousands of businesses succeed optimizing and controlling their cloud spend as they progress along their cloud journey. While optimizing and controlling cloud spend are major components of any good cloud cost management strategy, the first step is always to get visibility into your cloud spend. Visualizing this data through graphical interfaces is the easiest way to sift actionable insights from the thousands (or millions!) of rows of cost and usage data on your cloud bill.
Back in 2020 we released FlexReports, a powerful new way to aggregate datasets in VMware Aria Cost. With the release of FlexReports, customers can easily build reports across various dimensions to perform more granular analysis on cost, usage, and asset data. These reports will help you answer questions relevant to your business needs. For example, you can view costs for the month of October and organize results by AWS Account, Service Item, and Charge Type.
Additionally, customers can leverage an extensible GraphQL API to feed their critical business systems with near-real-time data. The API allows customers to run SQL queries against their billing data with a simple CSV output.
Powerful Visualizations in FlexReports
In 2022, we made a big improvement to FlexReports by adding the ability to create charts and graphs in the feature. With this key update, customers could create meaningful visualizations without the need to export files, and explore visualizations by changing chart types, x/y category fields, filters, sorting, and drilling down to more granular data. Some key capabilities of FlexReports include:
- Run SQL queries against billing data to generate custom reports
- Use a greater number of Perspectives than our interactive reports allow for
- Configure chart view: change chart type, category fields, X/Y-axes, and dual Y-axis
- Filter down to different resources, services, environments, teams, etc.
- Switch to live mode to see the latest data available (instead of last time the report was run)
- Manage access and permissions to datasets via FlexOrgs
- Subscribe to FlexReports to receive regular updates without logging into the platform
FlexReports Templates
With visualizations, customers quickly understood the power and value of FlexReports, and so we are investing engineering resources to further enhance this feature. Most recently, we made it easier for non-technical users to leverage the power of FlexReports with pre-built templates. These templates, or pre-packaged queries, give users a number of out-of-the-box options with FlexReports, as well as a starting point from which to modify queries to create an unlimited number of new reports.
We have curated a library of FlexReport templates to help customers get started with building any custom report they need. Some of these report templates include:
- Monthly RI float – shows how Reserved Instances float across AWS accounts to cover on-demand usage. This report is helpful for performing showback and/or chargeback to lines of business or cost centers.
- Aged snapshots – lists AWS snapshots that have no usage in the last 2 months and are ripe for termination. Use this report in conjunction with a policy that can automatically terminate these aged snapshots.
- Lambda usage – provides the total usage of AWS Lambda instances, grouped by Region and Usage Account ID, for last 12 months.
- Azure EA Usage – Shows the consumed quantity of Azure services, grouped by Subscription ID, subscription name, and product, for last 12 months.
- Monthly cost by GCP Services – shows monthly costs grouped by GCP services.
These are just a few examples of custom reports that can be created with FlexReports.
Transitioning to FlexReports Throughout the Product
Ultimately, FlexReports allow much greater customization and manipulation of data than our classic Interactive Reports, so we are transitioning over time to replacing our classic reports in the side navigation with out-of-the-box FlexReports that display the same data. The combination of pre-built FlexReports in the navigation, and customizable template queries for building new FlexReports gives customers the most flexibility to unlock valuable insights from their datasets.
Today, we are releasing a new out-of-the-box FlexReport that is pinned to the side navigation. This report is generated from the GCP BigQuery dataset and displays the last 13 months of cost data across different services like storage, analysis, API calls etc. Up next, we will release the GCP BigQuery Usage Report, and then deliver similar cost and usage FlexReports for Azure datasets.
Learn More
As more and more organizations transition workloads from private data centers to public cloud infrastructure, managing the cost of these workloads becomes a top priority. Because cloud costs are tied to usage, there are greater opportunities for cost savings in the cloud than in a private data center. We aim to be the most flexible and extensible FinOps (Cloud Cost Management) tool on the market, so that our customers can move forward to the cloud with speed and confidence that their cloud spend is driving greater business margins.
For a deep dive on the SQL behind FlexReports, please watch this in-depth video on our YouTube channel: Understanding SQL Behind FlexReports – VMware Aria Cost powered by CloudHealth.
