Hello readers!!!
Firstly, I want to say I hope everyone is ok and managing to keep going in these difficult times. Maybe this will take your mind off the crazy world with my new blog post announcement.
To be honest this isn't the most exciting thing in the world but when you're stuck at home like I am, any news not about CV is interesting.
The exciting news is that I am going to start a new series of blog posts called ‘What the CUR?’. This is going to be a set of mini posts focusing on the AWS Cost and Usage report (CUR) and how to pull out some useful insights and information from it.
Now you may ask what sparked this idea? Well, last month, on a crisp Sunday morning, I was sipping some coffee and wanted to check how a recent cost saving method was going (I know I have an exciting home life). I was having a look at Cost Explorer, when I noticed my billing account spend had increased by 10 times the normal amount and, without being specific, this amount was worthy of a well known shortbread.
I was very confused about what had caused this and panicked. It meant that I, or one of the devs, had become a classic cost waste fable, leaving something running and accumulating costs. I used Cost Explorer to identify the costs and was surprised as it was something I had never come across before, ‘Other out-of-cycle charges’. After a stressful online chat with an AWS support person I finally figured out it was some moved-around charges from a past month brought into this month. I was relieved for a second before I asked the question, ‘How can I find this in the CUR?’. The poor AWS person did not have a clue, I’m not even sure he knew what the CUR entailed as he asked me to open the excel file and if you have an estate like mine you know this is not a feasible solution. So I delved into the CUR, using Athena, as always, to figure out this mystery!
Of course I was able to figure it out and deal with the internal billing process that I needed but after this was all taken care of I realised how this kind of thing can often happen and that I needed an idiots‘ guide to the CUR. This is where my new segment has come from.
Hopefully I will post useful insights into the CUR and help you find information that you need. But please note that you need to have set up the Athena front end to your CUR which can be done using this guide.
Oh, and here is the solution to the out of cycle charge if you are interested.
So look out for the new Category on the blog page to see any new items discovered. Also if you have any requests please let me know at: roadtofinops@hotmail.com.
Be Safe!
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